No.1 Neighbour: Art in Papua New Guinea 1956-2016

106 №1 NEIGHBOUR STRONG WOMEN Barkcloth has been made in Papua New Guinea for thousands of years. Beaten from the bark of various trees, including the breadfruit and paper mulberry, these textured cloths were used to create objects essential for everyday and ceremonial life. The importation of ready- made fabrics has had an enormous influence on the creation of barkcloth in Papua New Guinea, however, for the isolated Omie people of Mount Lamington in Oro Province, barkcloth (known as nioge) continues to be made into clothing and blankets, as well as used for ritual. Nioge represents an important connection with traditional culture and beliefs. The cloths beaten and painted by Omie women today are intrinsically tied to the beginning of Omie time and the first female ancestor Suja, who, at the culmination of her first menstruation, cut bark from a tree to create a skirt that would tell her husband that her period had ended. The process involving identifying the best trees, making coconut-fibre brushes, beating the fibres, and learning the designs to mark the nioge is one young women continue to learn from their elders. Over the past two decades, some nioge have been created for market and have found homes in galleries and museums, and with collectors, around the world. The money from the exhibition and sale of these cloths returns to a cooperative, enabling the villagers to acquire goods. The Omie believe that the cloths travel as their advocates, creating alliances and generating awareness of their culture to help secure their future. Hung on white walls, nioge are often read as paintings. Their lively and often eccentric designs are associated with clan stories, creatures, mountains and other natural forms, or an equally breathtaking minimalism. On closer inspection, the fibrous, tissue-like structure of the cloth opens up to let the light through, while the designs appear to move around in concert with the texture of the fibres. The works resonate with the method of production: the touch of the hands that massaged them into being and the materiality of the barkcloth fromwhich they were made. The Omie speak of the process of knowledge transfer involved in creating nioge as their wisdom, or ‘vai hero’. They are guided in this process by their elders, who teach them how to read the cloth and how to develop sensitivity both to its physicality and to the stories to be revealed. Vivian Marumi’s nioge Odunege 4 (Jungle vines 4) 2006 depicts the sharp hooks and tendrils belonging to the common jungle vine. The way the vines fall, at times exposing more of the textured brown cloth, echoes the way these vines tangle and fall in the jungle. Before the time of the missionaries, this design was also tattooed on the faces of young women at the end of their initiation. Marumi’s cloth, like Suja’s first skirt, is a skin, marked to communicate the ongoing resilience and strength of the Omie. THE OMIE AND THE NIOGE RUTH M c DOUGALL VIVIAN MARUMI Odunege 4 (Jungle vines 4) 2006