Rare head sculpture
Adrian Schlag, Brussels, Belgium
Description
wood, min. residues of pigments, shell inlay (right eye), base
The three small Tabar Islands, Big Tabar, Tatau and Simberi are situated 30 miles away from the east of New Ireland.
In 1971, Jacques Kerchache presented some of these extremely rare monumental heads to the public in his gallery in Paris. He regarded them as a kind of archetype of the ‘malagan’ carvings.
Kerchache refers to old reports from New Ireland residents that the ‘malagan’ pieces are not from their own traditions, but were adopted from Tabar long ago, with some free and imaginative details and decorative elements added to the severe ancient style (Kerchache 1971).
In 2018, art historian Michael Gunn assigned one of the Tabar heads exhibited at Kerchache to a Malagan sub-tradition known as ‘Mendis’, based on stylistic features, including the tall serrated headdress and the particularly imposing tongue-shaped beard.
According to Gunn most ‘malagan’ images created on the Tabar Islands are ‘marumarua’ - images of the spirit of a person. They are not a picture of person’s physical body, but instead are portraits of the life that animated the body.
Gunn recounts an early 1980s ‘malagan’ ceremony on Tabar in which a monumental head of this type was placed beside the ritual leader, who was kneeling on a platform erected beside the large ‘malagan’ display wall. According to Gunn, the head served as a symbol of ritual authority in the transfer of ownership from one generation to the next, a crucial part of the comprehensive ‘malagan’ ceremonies.
Most ‘malagan’ images in the Tabar Islands were created to pay respect in a ritual context and were then destroyed or left to natural decay.