“I’m interested in how people commemorate the past, and how the past affects the future - how we deal with remembrance - and this applies to family, relationships, industrial cultures… it’s almost like ‘industrial archaeology’, you could say.”
Above: illustration of the garments/costume worn in death ceremonies.
From the Metropolitan Museum of Art…
“The Asmat artist enjoys some real advantage over the artist of the western world. The Asmat culture offers the artist a specific language in form. This is a language which every artist can interpret and use according to his genius, and a language which has a symbolic meaning for the entire culture. Our culture offers the artist no such language. The result is that each painter or sculptor must discover his own means of communicating in form. Only the greatest geniuses are able to invent an expression which has meaning for a nation of people.
Further more, the Asmat is a culture where art is a necessary and integrated element. There can be no war, no feasting, without the expenditure of tremendous effort on the part of the sculptor. Thus as long as the culture is intact; art will flourish…” - Michael. C. Rockefeller, November 16, 1961.
