PAPUAN GULF REGION, PAPUA NEW GUINEA

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The peoples of the Papuan Gulf have several abstract figural traditions depicting and channeling the powers of local nature spirits known as imunu. These spirits inhabit specific features of the landscape, such as rivers, waterfalls, or mountains, and are deeply linked to the tribe. The figures are kept in clan shrines in large men’s houses and serve to aid, protect and guide the community.

A particularly rare subset of imunu figures are those carved improvisationally from naturally shaped segments of trees. After receiving a dream, a sculptor would trek into a mangrove forest and find roots or branches that resembled the forms of the spirits – male or female – he had dreamt. The carving would be minimal or selective, preserving the natural shape of the wood. As such, these sculptures often possess an uncanny feeling of motion and spontaneity, a tint of personality and willfulness that lies partially outside the control of the artist.

This is an early example of a ‘found’ spirit figure. It is a limbless representation in which a tapering suggestion of a body trails from a large head carved from a knot of wood. The face is carved in relief, similar in technique to the spirit boards and bioma figures also found in men’s house shrines. Dense, raised designs fill out the face and neck in white, black and red ochre, and the staring eyes, placed at the center of curling semi-spirals, hold an entrancing power.