Gope votive board Kesemba village. Kerewa district... Lot 101

Gope votive board Kesemba village. Kerewa district Gulf of Papua Papua New Guinea Guinea Diomo wood (Pterocarpus indicus), trace of ochre pigment, lime Inscription on back in graphite: 286 / 21.3.66 Dimensions: 139 x 26 cm Provenance: - Collected in situ by Thomas Schultze Westrum - The Jolika Collection of Marcia & John Friede. Rye, New York Sacred objects artistically materializing ancestral lineages and clans, votive boards from the Gulf of Papua, called gope by the Urama and Wapo peoples Wapo, temporarily housed the spirit-beings depicted (Welsh, Webb and Harara, Coaxing the Spirits to Dance Spirits to Dance, Art and Society in the Papuan Gulf of New Guinea, 2006, p. 42). The great rarity of gope plates attributed to the Kerewa is the historic nature of this one, collected by Thomas Schultze Westrum in the village of Kesemba on March 21, 1966, as indicated in his notes. Inscribed in a slender, elongated oval shape, this votive board depicts a stylized male figure, with alternating sculpted reliefs and incised shapes, enhanced by traces of ochre, black and lime pigments, giving its surface a sophisticated, rhythmic graphic rendering. Its highly distinctive decoration is unmistakably different from the classical corpus. Resting on a median axis symbolizing the spinal column, on either side a successive, repetitive decoration of undulating shapes represents the ribs of the spirit-ancestor incarnate. In a fabulous, poetic dynamic of spiritual elevation, magnifying and embracing the periphery of the thought, the gesture of the slender arms encircling the schematized round face. The circumference of the head, decorated with alternating black and white stripes, probably symbolizes the radiance of the incarnate spirit.