Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art

About this Work

The village of Tambanum, along the Middle Sepik, is known for its variety of elaborate masks, carvings, and dance figures. This figure of a boar may be a model for a larger figure or, because of its relatively small size, it may have been created for the art market. Some such figures range between fifteen and twenty feet long, requiring several men to carry each one.

Dance figures representing boars and other hunted animals are used only once, before a hunt, when the figure is ceremonially killed in order to ensure the success of the coming hunt. Other large animal figures are representations of totemic ancestors associated with a particular clan and often used during initiations.

Characteristic of the form, the figure has two faces, the lower of which the performer would look out from, in this case the boar’s mouth, while the upper face is intended to create an imposing appearance. It is also common for a human face or features to be combined with those of an animal.