Board "malu" ·  Papouasie-Nouvelle-Guinée, Sawos · ID: 3037927

Description

wood, black paint, red and white pigment, filigree work: drop-shaped holes forming floral motifs, small head on top, raised vertical middle ridge, two grid-like compartments in the lower third, projection in shape of a crocodile head, slightly dam., minor missing parts (crocodile snout), abrasion of paint, rep. (several vertical breakages on the left half of the board);
almost all of the sparse field information about openwork “malu” boards was not obtained from the Sawos but from their neighbours, the Iatmul, where they were collected. One description of “malu” board motifs is birds playing in the forest. However, Douglas Newton, suggests a more serious purpose. He proposes that the “malu” was originally a cult object, a “rack from which captured heads were hung, functionally akin to the Kerewa “agibe”. To him the “malu” represents a highly stylized male human figure, the archetypal cannibal, the founding father of the group, a great cultural hero and warrior.

Littérature comparée

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (ed.), Africa, Oceania, the Americas, and the Jolika Collection of New Guinea Art, San Francisco 2006, ill. 230