The art of the Sawos at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC

black-culture:

Photography by Liesl Marelli of Girona Consulting. (All Rights Reserved)
website ⁞ blog ⁞ e-mail ⁞ facebook
Available for purchase. Watermark does not appear on printed or downloaded photography.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the world’s largest and finest art museums. Its collections include more than two million works of art spanning five thousand years of world culture, from prehistory to the present and from every part of the globe. Founded in 1870, the Metropolitan Museum is located in New York City’s Central Park along Fifth Avenue (from 80th to 84th Streets). Nearly five million people visit the Museum each year. (information courtesy of: http://www.metmuseum.org)

About the Art:
The art of the Sawos, Iatmul, and neighboring peoples in the Middle Sepik region of northeastern New Guinea is primarily associated with their impressive men’s ceremonial houses, which are seen as the embodiments of primordial female ancestors. The triangular gables at either end of Sawos and Iatmul men’s houses rise into steep peaks crowned by separately carved wood finials that depict human figures with birds, usually eagles, perched above them. Local interpretations of this imagery vary. In some instances, the human images are said to represent enemies subdued by the power of the village’s totemic beings. In this interpretation, the bird symbolizes the village’s martial strength, which in former times assured victory in war. According to other accounts, the finial images represent the dual nature of the primordial bird-men and bird-women, who originally created the sacred musical instruments, consisting of bamboo flutes and slit gongs that were kept within the ceremonial houses and played a central role in ritual life. (Information provided by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, http://www.metmuseum.org)