This is a wooden Asmat ancestral carving which measures 28” in length and 5.5” in height. It depicts two female figures, one standing on the shoulders of the other, who is crouched. The lower figure’s hands are on their bent knees, and their feet are together to form the carving’s base. The upper figure is standing upright holding the head of a hornbill bird in its hands. The beak of the hornbill is open, with the lower beak attached to the upper figure’s chin and the upper beak resting on the upper figure’s forehead. The entire piece is brown but was likely originally painted all in red pigments. The identity of the hornbill is confirmed by the indentations carved into the base of its beak, a characteristic feature of Asmat art.
Hornbills are typically associated with images of power and strength as a symbol of headhunting practices amongst the Asmat culture. They accompany praying mantises in this regard. The red pigment is wasah, which is created by mixing red clays found along the riverbanks in upstream communities. Color is often associated with having magic properties, and is very common in many Asmat ethnographic pieces.
Carvings of ancestry figures play an extremely important role in Asmat society. They are often carved only for the festival which celebrates the creation of mankind at the hands of the Great Woodcarver Fumeripits, a foundational mythical figure at the heart of much of Asmat culture. Ancestor carvings are made from a single piece of wood taken from the trunk of a sago tree, and are carved in such a way that their base can be jammed into the soft mud to keep them standing upright. Figures such as this are representative of the core belief in Asmat culture that man is interchangeable with tree. After the festival for Fumeripits concludes, carvings are discarded in the rainforest so that the spirits of the dead can aid the sago trees in further growth.
Colors: Brown, Red
