CategoriesCultural and Religious Styles
Papua New Guinea Art
Art from Papua New Guinea, from Sepik River carving and New Ireland malagan to Highlands body adornment and modern painting.
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No open-access works for Papua New Guinea Art are in the index yet. They will appear here as more collections are indexed.
About
Papua New Guinea, the eastern half of New Guinea together with New Britain, New Ireland, Bougainville and hundreds of smaller islands, holds an extraordinary range of art traditions shaped by local ritual and exchange. Along the Sepik River, men's houses rise to towering painted gables, and Iatmul and Abelam carvers make ancestor figures, masks and hooks for hanging food and valuables. In New Ireland, carvers produce malagan, openwork sculptures painted red, black and white for rites honouring the dead, many of them meant to be discarded afterwards. Trobriand and other Massim islanders carve scrolling prow boards for canoes used in ceremonial exchange voyages.
In the Highlands, the most striking art is often worn: shell valuables, painted faces, bird-of-paradise plumes and, among the Huli, wigs made from human hair. Women across the country loop bilum string bags. Modern painting took off in the 1970s with Timothy Akis and Mathias Kauage, whose bold figures drew on this inheritance.