This barkcloth was made during the first half of the 20th century in New Ireland, Papau New Guinea.
This powerful barkcloth is a rare example of narrative textile art from Papua New Guinea that speaks in sacred symbols and cosmological sequences. Likely associated with the spiritual movements known as “cargo cults” which emerged in response to colonial disruption. A lone foreign figure stands turned away from the sacred realm accompanied by a horned spirit, a possible agent of expulsion or divine correction. At the opposite side, a turtle moves deliberately toward a yellow and red flag, joined by a descending celestial being and an inverted fish. These ancestral figures reorient the composition toward balance, light, and sacred continuity.
The cloth envisions a sacred reversal. A failed foreign power is spiritually removed, and the world realigns around ancestral presence and renewal. More than a communal memory, it is a prophecy. A vision of a sacred world interrupted and ultimately restored.
Bark cloth or Tapa is made inner bark of a tree is beaten with a mallet and joined into a large cloth which is then decorated with natural dyes and pigments
Special Provenance: Field collected by Nobel Laureate George Wald in New Ireland, Papua New Guinea during the 1960s.
Size: 3’6" x 4’2" [107cm x 127cm]
Age: First Half of the 20th Century
Origin: New Guinea
Type of Textile: Tapa
Material: Bark Cloth and natural pigment
Condition: Very good
TX542
