The first exhibition to explore the human form across the full breadth of New Guinea’s artistic traditions, Island of a Thousand Faces: The Human Image in New Guinea will also be the first traveling exhibition in the United States in more than forty years to present a full survey of New Guinea sculpture. Comprising roughly eighty  pieces selected by Guest Curator Eric Kjellgren, the Evelyn A. J. Hall and John A. Friede Associate Curator for Oceanic Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the exhibition will include many of the most iconic works of New Guinea sculpture, as well as highly important but lesser-known pieces from museums and private collections in the United States and Europe.

Home to some eight hundred different languages, the island of New Guinea is the most culturally diverse in Oceania. As elsewhere in Oceania, the arts of New Guinea are predominantly religious in their inspiration, imagery, and function. Serving as dynamic links between the human and supernatural worlds, they depict the divine beings whose supernatural powers sustain the community and the world.  One of the themes that unifies the varied artistic traditions of the island is the universality of the human image. Human images on the island range from comparatively naturalistic to semi-abstract.

At once immediately recognizable and extraordinarily malleable, the human image in New Guinea is continually reconceived and reworked within each artistic tradition to express and emphasize the otherworldly nature of the beings they represent, creating startlingly original aesthetic effects once much admired by the surrealists in the West.  These beings can be divided into two categories: ancestors (the recent or primordial progenitors of living humans) and spirits (non-ancestral beings, often associated with particular locations within the landscape, which frequently appear in human or human-like forms). Sacred images predominantly act as temporary or semi-permanent vessels into which the power of these divine beings can be called for consultation or the presentation of offerings during religious ceremonies. The exhibition will explore both the shared imagery and myriad identities and expressions of the human form across the island’s diverse artistic traditions. The guest curator will author the exhibition catalogue, together with other leading scholars of Pacific art, a number of whom are Pacific Islanders themselves.

Island of a Thousand Faces: The Human Image in New Guinea will travel to three venues.

*This is when the tour is expected to begin. The exact date will depend upon the needs of the participating institutions. 

For more information, contact Manager of Exhibitions Anna Hayes Evenhouse at 212.988.7700 ext. 212 or ahayes@afaweb.org