Of Papuan ancestry, the Asmat are expected to have begun their cultural evolution on the southwestern coast of New Guinea more than four hundred years ago. These people, their home and the exceptionally creative outpourings of their culture have been a source of awe in curious Western minds for much of the 20th century.  Once a part of Sahul, the continent comprised of Australia, Tasmania and part of the now submerged mass separating the Pacific and Indian oceans, New Guinea as we know it today represents the Earth's second largest island, reaching from warm equatorial sands to icy glacial peaks of c. 16,000 feet.  Early Western accounts of Asmat encounters begin with the explorations of Willem Jansz and Jan Carstenz, Dutch explorers of the 17th century. Later, the log of Captain James Cook suggests the loss of uncounted mariners to Asmat warriors. The apparently unsuspecting Asmat were set upon with armed hostility by members of Cook's party attempting to reach landfall in search of water. Following isolation from most of the world lasting into the 1950’s, many today remember the research, collections and unfortunate loss of Michael Rockefeller in 1961, amid ominous descriptions of his demise in this land of unforgiving seas, fierce crocodiles and headhunting cannibals.

Today the "pacified" Asmat lead a comparatively peaceful if challenging existence. Their land continues to resist change, yet a looming tidal wave of outside influence continues to lap their shores. Their former existence shared only by occasional traders and early twentieth century research expeditions, today the combined effects of Indonesia’s sovereign authority, western religion and mores, tourism and the exploitation of the region’s rich natural resources have provided an unyielding catalyst for change. The Asmat today are torn by the coercion, temptation and innovation brought about by a cultural evolution which pits traditional beliefs against Western concepts of progress. This evolution is seen clearly in their art, as art for the Asmat has always been integral not just to their feasts and rituals, but to their everyday life balance and existence.  Asmat art of the latter twentieth century demonstrates and proclaims boldly the emergence of a new cultural generation and indeed a burgeoning renaissance among the preeminent traditional artists of our time.

Asmat art was once divided into four reasonably distinguishable categories based upon variations among the types of war shields: A, B, C and D, relating to Central, Northwestern, Inland Citak and Brazza River domiciled peoples, respectively. More recently, further study and a deeper understanding of the cultural groups within Asmat have identified twelve distinct cultural groups, five in Central Asmat, four in the Northwest, two in the Citak or Yupmakcain region and one in the Brazza River region.  These groups fit within the four regions previously identified, however, they extend beyond the visually discernible characteristics of shape and iconography displayed on war shields and seek to identify cultural designations based upon language, geography, myth, ritual, feasts, resources and artistic activity.

While there are similarities in the art of the various cultural groups, there too are dramatic differences. These differences are driven in part by geography: proximity to the coast, rivers or other villages may encourage the observance of different feasts or cause these feasts to be celebrated differently from those located away from these influences. Or they may be driven by resource availability, for example, mangrove trees, the wood source for bis, the famed ancestor poles of the Bismam, Becembub and Simai-Asmat are not prevalent or are otherwise entirely unavailable to certain other cultural groups within Asmat. Similarly, sago palms representing the primary food and raw material staple of most Asmat, are comparatively rare in the hinterlands, as are the many species of fish that  are abundant in the tidal lowlands. Further, the prevalence of, and the degree of influence exerted by outsiders, have affected each of these cultural groups differently.  All of these elements and more still act to invite a diversification of change in the evolution of Asmat art

Genesis: Tradition And The Origins Of Glory

There is speculation that certain elements in Asmat art were brought to the area by the ancestors of today's Asmat who may have been émigrés from elsewhere in New Guinea seeking new food supplies or fleeing the oppressions of tribal war. Clearly, certain of their art takes the form of objects familiar to other societies in New Guinea, throughout Melanesia and beyond. Most all of their iconography, however, and a considerable number of ritual art objects required for their traditional feasts, are unique to this remarkable people.
 
The Asmat of origin comprise a highly ritualized and deeply "religious" society in which stability among the living is intensely reliant upon myth and the assistance of ancestors. The Asmat occupy or transcend from and among three recognizable worlds.  Capinbinak or Asmat-ow is the world of the living, here on Earth as we know it. Capinmi or damer-ow, the world of souls and spirits is a dangerous place of fear and apprehension.  The Asmat world of the ancestors located to the Western horizon and called Safan or Ji-ow is somewhat analogous to the Western concept of Heaven. Serenity of existence in Asmat is encouraged and sustained only with continual adjustments to the balance among these worlds. This requisite equilibrium is brought about only by the fulfillment of ritual obligations, which in turn are possible only with the commission, preparation and presence of their art at periodic feasts.  These ritual celebrations are synonymous with the art objects that are created to enact the careful balance. The bis pokumbu, a war feast for which the bis prepared, represents a prelude to war and requires the blood of an enemy's head to be spilled at its base, freeing otherwise trapped ancestral spirits to move beyond the middle world and on to Safan. The yamas pokumbu is a feast of the war shields, wherein ancestors are honored but called upon as well to enter the war shields, providing protection for the owner. The ci pokumbu is the feast associated with the production of war canoes, and for the bi pokumbu elaborate jipae body masks are woven to assist in freeing the souls of the dead who have returned to the earthly world. The jeu pokumbu celebrates the building of a new men’s house, the cultural center of all village activity in Asmat, and requires the commission of numerous art objects to address ancestral worship and goodwill to those who inhabit the world of the living.  Among the largest of feasts, the je ti is a string of events in the Emari Ducur requiring months of planning and huge amounts of art in support of its many rituals, once thought to be individual observances in their own right.

These feasts, ceremonies or rituals, however, mostly fail to meet the approval of Christian or other Western mores: headhunting to avenge the death of an ancestor, cannibalism to absorb the powers of the enemy, orgies allowing the flow of semen to rebalance the spirit world with that of the living. These are the requirements made of the Asmat in order to maintain equilibrium amongst the three worlds, in order to dispel plague or famine, or to encourage fertile families and prolific hunting. These rituals and their attendant art objects are at the soul of the Asmat being, to view their art allows a look into the worldly representation of this soul.

Traditional art of the Asmat is bold and powerful.  Each object is thoughtfully named for an ancestor both in dedication to an important forebear, and to seek the protection and goodwill of an honored resident of Safan. In addition to being named for one specific ancestor, war shields and other items may contain  the venerable representations of one or more additional ancestors. These often take the symbolic form of a surrogate headhunter, perhaps a mantis, cuscus, fruit-eating bird, or bat. These are the cousins of the Asmat, as they too consume the head or flesh of their prey.  In the case of the fruit-eaters, it is the head of the tree that is consumed. For the Asmat, whose name derives from the word for tree, man and tree are incarnations of the same being.

Art has evolved highly within Asmat society, taking on importance, mandating individual prestige, and assuming a value that generally exceeds our Western capacity for the appreciation of art. Further, art has permeated nearly every aspect of Asmat daily life with spiritually inspired imagery found on virtually all possessions ranging from deadly spears to food bowls, from smoking pipes to ritual masks, and from ancestor poles to war shields. The wow-ipits or wood carver is a man of paramount importance in Asmat society.  His talents are sought after and his product is prized. The wow-ipits is commissioned regularly by his fellow villagers for the creation of objects appurtenant to a feast or celebration. Once commissioned, he and his family will be looked after by his employer with the finest sago and grubs, as his happiness and well being are essential to encourage the power of the ancestral spirits to enter his work. While all villagers create objects of everyday utility, draw upon and incorporate their individual creative talents, it is the wow-ipits who are called upon to create the ceremonial items of primary artistic and spiritual consequence.

True works of traditional Asmat origin are quite rare in Western museums. The original softwood carvings predating the great war were historically returned to the trees by the Asmat, left to rot in the jungle following their prized usefulness in feasts and ritual. Others have fallen to rot, jungle humidity and infestation. Those few surviving works are today housed in European museums, the physical record or ethnological trophy of early explorers dating back as far as 1838, but primarily originating just after the turn of the 20th  century. From the middle 1950's until the very early 1960's there was a short-lived flurry of cultural activity in Asmat, as representatives of museums, contemporary explorers, and private collectors visited Asmat to understand better this fascinating people and return to the west with their bounty. Much of the carving during this period was influenced by outsiders, yet often used in warfare or ritual and containing a spiritual power of the yet untamed Asmat. These carvings are considered in the grander scheme to represent the traditional form. As the 1960's were underway,  less discerning Dutch expatriates who envisioned the closing prospect of a change in sovereign control sought souvenirs of their time spent in Asmat. While usually of traditional form, these later carvings often lacked practical use, the patina of age, and the power of the spirits.

These post-war works may be enjoyed at several noteworthy museums in the United States including the Rockefeller wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Peabody Museum in Salem, Massachusetts and the American Museum of Asmat Art in St. Paul, Minnesota.

There are several valid representations of the traditional form and symbolism in "Renaissance at the Jungle's Edge." These traditional works generally originated in the 1980's and later with most of the items displayed emanating from the northwest sector of Asmat. The most noteworthy works were collected from the Emari Ducur cultural group and the Unir Siran during a collecting expedition undertaken in April, 1995. Others represent the traditional styles of the Safan group as well as the Becembub, Central Asmat in general, and the Yupmakcain.  Prized among this group of traditional objects are the omu from the village of Pupis on the Wasar River in the Emari Ducur region which is shown in the plate #T3 (above)
at the top of the page.This significant piece is quite rare, estimated to have been produced in the 1970's for a je ti festival during a difficult period for all of the Asmat people. Also of significance in this group of traditional art objects are the jiwiwoka and two doroe body masks from the villages of Esmapan, Weo, and Iroko, respectively. Each again from the region of Emari Ducur and likewise all were produced for the je ti in each of those villages, albeit, on a more contemporary scale. The jiwiwoka and the doroe from Weo are included in the plate at the beginning of this essay. Plate #T4 (right) describes a particularly well decorated pipe used by the Korowai in the mountains beyond the Yupmakcain and Bras areas of Asmat. While the Korowai are technically not considered to be of the Asmat culture, this pipe, of bamboo incised with a rodents tooth and dyed with vegetable pigments, is similar to those of the Asmat who dwell in these hinterlands and represents an indigenous style that remains unchanged and virtually without foreign influence.

Prohibition: Fear, Threat And Forbiddance—The Intrusion

The conflict between Western ideology and the intrepid power of all that is Asmat once threatened to end the ritual and carving, possibly even to draw a closure to Asmat culture altogether.  Following a general absence of contact between the Asmat and western civilization lasting into the 1950's, various missionaries undertook in earnest to proselytize the remote areas of New Guinea following the second war. Adhering to a frequently ineffective and often maligned process apparently amongst primitive people the world over, missionary zeal began to infringe Asmat from surrounding areas, threatening a similarly unfortunate impact. By 1953, however, a permanent Catholic mission under the Crosier order had become established in Agats, an existing Dutch administrative center near the village of Syuru, with hopes to wield a more liberal and positive influence across Asmat. Nonetheless, much of their cultural foundation was unavoidably compromised as the very tenets of Asmat existence were in direct contradiction with the strong beliefs held by these outsiders.

Following the disappearance in 1961 of Michael Rockefeller, and given the tabloid notoriety of his alleged ruin amongst the New Guinea Cannibals, a peculiar frenzy was initiated in Asmat.  As the United Nations prepared to remove Dutch New Guinea from the dominion of The Netherlands and place the area instead under the administrative control of the relatively new nation of Indonesia, the extant laissez-faire attitude of the trade-centric Dutch would cease. The cultural liberty that had been allowed in Asmat posed a difficult challenge for a new nation needing to build a cohesive and enduring political unity.  Shortly after the administrative change, festivals were forbidden, art of any traditional genre was made taboo, and even the requisite honors to the deceased ancestors were banned. Indonesians newly domiciled in Asmat were fearful of the stories telling of headhunting and cannibalism.  As a consequence, in 1963, the mens houses, otherwise cultural temples of the Asmat village, were systematically burned to the ground along with many items of cultural or ritual significance across the land. Dancing and drumming, deemed a prelude to headhunting, were strictly limited by an overwhelming military presence in the area.  The proud and fierce Asmat people had endured for centuries, but in the middle 1960's their culture was under siege and hope for their perseverance was nearly lost. Fearing loss of control, danger to outsiders, and critical review of their operations, Indonesian military and police forces withheld from most visitors access to Asmat for thirty years until 1991.

Seen initially to regard the indigenous population with contempt or disdain, beginning in 1968 with encouragement again from the United Nations, the Indonesians began to recognize and understand the value and beauty of the Asmat.
 
 

Rebirth: Salvation of Culture—The Revival Of Art

With support from 1968 until 1974 of the United Nations' Asmat Art Project, many of the negative outside forces thrust upon the Asmat began to slowly subside. Encouraged by Vatican II to respect the need for indigenous peoples in the pursuit of cultural fulfillment, growth of the Catholic mission in Agats was robust. In 1973, Alphonse A. Sowada, an American bishop and respected anthropologist known to Asmat since 1961 encouraged the Crosier mission in Agats to open the Asmat Museum for Culture and Progress. With the assistance of Tobias Schneebaum who assisted in initial efforts and became largely responsible for the accumulation of items selected to join the museum collection and exhibits, the Asmat approached the cusp of a cultural rebirth. Tobias Schneebaum remains today an artist, anthropologist, and curator of international renown and will be honoring "Renaissance at the Jungle's Edge" on May 17, 1998, with a visit to our Museum. He will be addressing patrons with a program of Asmat song and myth along with his own photographic journal compiled during his many visits and years domiciled in Asmat.

During this transitional era in Asmat history, limited outsiders were allowed to visit the area.  Among the few were Gunter and Ursula Konrad whose collections founded  the respected Konrad Collection in the Museum of Ethnology in Heidelberg. Further international support was registered in the 1980’s when Indonesia's First Lady, Ibu Tien Suharto, along with other prominent  Indonesians established an Asmat Foundation. The foundation sponsored expositions demonstrating wood carving, dancing and cultural activities across Europe and in the United States in 1991.  Throughout this period, the Asmat gradually began to carve again, reviving their art.  Change was underway as well, and carving began to be sustained on a continual basis, rather than only in preparation of items for intermittent feasts. Effects on the character of Asmat art became noticeable as buyers were suddenly available en masse to purchase even inferior works.  There became a serious disconnect between ritual and art, threatening a loss of both tradition and quality.

The greatest impact accomplished by outsiders relative to the evolution of Asmat art has been that effected by the Crosier Mission. Along with their support of the Asmat Museum of Culture and Progress, the Catholic missionaries in 1981, organized an annual festival and competition among the Asmat villages and individual artists.
 
 In October of each year, artists from throughout Asmat converge at the Mission and Museum in Agats to display their very best works in each of seven categories: traditional works, mythical depictions, panels, ajour as well as small, medium and large scaled works. The very best of each category become the recipients of prestigious awards, with the creations of all category finalists being placed on exhibit in the Museum for all to study and appreciate. The remaining entries are sold at auction with proceeds of the sale going to the artists and villages from which the entries originate. The impact of this competition on Asmat pride and the quality and prolificacy of their art has been phenomenal. The latest generation of Asmat are again realizing the outstanding abilities they possess. Their art, which was once at risk of following others of the World's traditional art genres into the dismal abyss of "airport art," has rebounded to previously unknown heights. The Mission, meanwhile, has succeeded in their goal to displace headhunting and ritual warfare by supplanting those acts with a valued cultural competition and product.  Participation in the carving festival allows Asmat villages and individual artists to attain heightened self respect with a prestige similar to that which was previously available only to the warrior displaying his bounty upon return from a successful raid on a neighboring village.

Considerable structural change has occurred since 1968. Ironwood and palm hardwoods had always been used by the Asmat for making spears and paddles, but these woods were not easily available nor were they sought out by the wow-ipits for ceremonial carvings. Village sawmills put in place to build mission churches and housing, however, created large supplies of scrap hardwood as a by-product.  This availability of a viable new medium for experimentation opened a new channel for innovative carvers and others who might wish to emulate the revered wow-ipits. Missionary Father van Pey had once made a gift to the wow-ipits of Atsj village of scrap ironwood boards leftover from the Mission sawmill. These encouraged a particularly viable innovation known as ajour. The long, thin and elegant openwork ajour carvings created by the Asmat of Atsj were a clear adaptation of traditional carving on paddles, spears and ancestor poles. This style became ubiquitous during the following decade as it spread from village to village, as the Asmat were able to view the ajour at the Museum in Agats. Soon, even the famous bis were sometimes carved of ironwood, a substance that was particularly strong and could withstand the rigors of travel to foreign lands in the cache of visitors to Asmat. For this variation, bis were shortened to assist in transportation and protruding phalluses were folded upward to reduce the prospect of breakage. The wow-pits even learned that the exceptionally hard ironwood could be carved in the rough with relative ease when green, and completed to a beautiful finish with a more intricate or elaborate design after drying and hardening.

This exhibit contains numerous items which display a contemporary use by the Asmat of ironwood and other hardwoods including an ajour piece from Central Asmat photographed in the accompanying plate #C4 (left). Another noteworthy item of this genre is represented by an ironwood ancestor pole collected in 1992 from the village of Omandesep. Depicting a group of ancestors stacked in a position much as would be the case in a traditional bis, in this piece the artist chose to surround the group by a network of carved banyan tree roots, a difficult innovation which might have been altogether impossible if he were to have used traditional softwoods.

Additional structural change has been witnessed in the size of certain of the accomplishments of Asmat artists in recent decades. This change in size may be observed in several forms: initially the wow-ipits responded to his market by accurately reproducing traditionally styled works of art, abbreviated in size as the market wished.  Soon, however, odd works were created with artistic embellishments of enlarged size serving no useful or traditional purpose. While the former of these styles was clearly a response to outsiders who wished to carry away from Asmat a cultural artifact that would fit in a suitcase, knapsack or on an airplane, the latter was far more clever.  Here the Asmat added purposeless examples of their prowess and artistic ability to sometimes utilitarian items, but in a size or form factor that otherwise dominated the item at its core. The only clear reason for such addition being to demonstrate the Asmat art form for the purpose of aesthetics and market acceptance by outsiders.

One further transition of the wow-ipits' art, which exemplifies both traits of abbreviating size and enlargement of  aesthetically pleasing attributes, is the faux-canoe prow. It seems visitors to Asmat often wished to return home with the handsomely carved prow of an Asmat war canoe as an enduring souvenir and traditional example of Asmat art. This too often tempted the unpopular act, however, of severing the prow from the canoe, leaving an unadorned and now surplus canoe as the unfortunate by-product. The Asmat responded in two ways. First, they created faux-canoe prows that were never actually connected to a war canoe at all, then they pushed innovation further by creating very small canoes with overgrown prows, which just happened to fit into an airplane cargo container. These market driven changes have no basis in traditional Asmat art, however, they often display wonderfully the finer characteristics of Asmat creativity, workmanship and detail.

Several items in this exhibit display the features described above; two of the bis on display have been scaled-down to meet the requirements of transport, one from Central Asmat is of traditional design while the other from the village of Sawa displays contemporary nuance.A beautiful shield from the village of Weo, containing an elaborately detailed upper section, is a particularly fine example of the wow-ipits' artistic talents applied to items that would not traditionally have been so painstakingly adorned. A faux prow from Weo reveals carving detail which may be compared to the suspected true prows from the villages of Yeni and Sawa, each maintaining the restrictions imposed upon any prow that must also survive the rigors of daily use on the rivers and in the sea. The group of duochromatic panels or plaques from various villages in the Northwest, generally near Sawa and Erma, indicate a completely new adaptation of Asmat Art. Whether these evolved from shields or bowls or as a completely unique form is unclear, yet these hardwood plaques are among the most widely sought after examples of contemporary Asmat art. They often involve tremendous detail and innovation, bringing together elements of bowls, shields, ajour and other art forms in an aesthetically pleasing manifestation reminiscent of the storyboards witnessed in other cultures.
 

Other concessions to outside influence are seen in the action-oriented figure carvings of recent decades.  Comprising a dominant number of the entries to the annual carving festival, these three dimensional storyboards have no historical basis in original art. Conventional Asmat carvings of the human form were somewhat abstract and always static,  never "doing" anything in the sense of action whatsoever. This new genre caters to outsiders' desires, placing the Asmat in a story of sorts: carrying a spear, packing a cache of sago or a youngster, holding a snake, fish or bird.  A common contemporary motif is apparent in this exhibit as described by the sculpture from Central Asmat in the plate #C5 (left) depicting a warrior driving a spear into the captured enemy.

The implication of action or movement in contemporary Asmat art is not the only change which has taken place as the developing wow-ipits has extended his awareness of the human form. On shields, the human form was once rare, more commonly taking the form of a surrogate headhunter, a bat or cuscus for instance. When actually depicted as the recognizable human form, this form was always created in a forward facing sketch-like pose, arms and legs at right angles pointing straight up or down. Contemporary shields, however, introduce limbs with a sense of movement, fingers and other features more plainly recognizable and with faces presented in the profile, the latter being a modification not evident in traditional Asmat art. A striking example of this modern style is presented in plate #C2 (right) on a war shield from Central Asmat which has joined this exhibit.

These changes described are but a few of the numerous alterations which the Asmat wow-ipits have implemented in the course of becoming acculturated to western and other outside influences. In 1972, a canoe was discovered in Central Asmat which embodied a warrior straddling a dragon upon its prow. It was determined that the owner of the canoe had been given a matchbox from Thailand which was emblazoned with a picture of the Hindu Naga. This created in the carver's mind a visual image of the mythical Asmat snake Jok, common to local stories, and was transformed into a canoe prow and unwittingly another adaptation in Asmat art.  Prior to this in 1970, a carving was brought to Agats of a large bird which possessed outstretched wings. The Asmat sea eagle War had never been contrived with wings in such fashion as this.  It turned out that the artist had seen a poster of the Indonesian national emblem containing the Garuda or eagle.  The artist failed to understand the ribbon held by the Garuda's claw, so in his carving of War he placed a fish in the sea eagles grasp. Today, among the most proud of the artists are those commissioned to carve the giant crucifix or the ornate housepole lending structural support and to adornment village churches.

The Asmat wow-ipits is doggedly creative, an artist by international standards. His art has persisted and changed, it has given up power and fear in lieu of nuance and character. Some outsiders have been saddened by the loss of a traditional culture and archaic form while others experience delight at the determination and perseverance of the artist who arose from the ashes of the prohibitionary fire. Art has stretched and matured through the ages of Western civilization and Asmat art is not to be regarded any differently. The wow-ipits will continue to grow, to learn and to teach those who seek of his power, his grace and his beauty.

Steven C. Chiaramonte 
Guest Curator
1998
 
 

Lent by Steven C. Chiaramonte
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(T2) The war shield below is made traditionally of the plank root of a mangrove tree.  Showing signs of innovation and impracticality, it probably was not intended for actual use.  It was collected of the Unir Siran Asmat from the joined village of Mbu-Agani, and is decorated with flying foxes and other motifs and "painted" with pigments of ground shell, charcoal and mud.

Lent by Steven C. Chiaramonte
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(T5) The traditionally "static" ancestor sculpture above was collected from the south coastal region of Safan Asmat.  Exhibiting little or no contemporary attributes and showing signs of natural age, it was probably carved in the 1980's to draw the goodwill of an ancestral spirit into a new feast house.  Of softwood with traditional pigments.

Lent by Steven C. Chiaramonte
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(T3) Unchanged through the ages in Asmat, the Omu  at the top of the page was made for a je ti festival suspected to have taken place during the 1970's in the village of Pupis.  The rare and powerful omu is created only infrequently by the Emari Ducur Asmat and carries awesome powers.  It is decorated with butterflies carved into its midsection and with pigments long removed by age and climate in the recesses of the feast house of Pupis.

Gift of Steven C. Chiaramonte
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(T4) Protected from outside influence by dense rainforest, the nomadic Korowai people of the Jawawijaya hinterlands beyond Asmat created and used the bamboo smoking pipe pictured here. The slippery surface carved beautifully in relief with the tooth of a rodent and dyed with the juices of plants endemic to the Dairem River wilderness, this pipe is similar to those used in Asmat and elsewhere in New Guinea.  Collected in 1993.

Lent by Steven C. Chiaramonte.
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(C1) The beautifully carved and very contemporary drum above was created in the village of Beriten by a talented artist of the Bismam Asmat near the coast.  Intricately carved for sale or show of hardwood with a lizard skin tympanum, it has never been tuned and shows no other signs of intended use.  Collected in 1995.

Lent by Gordon Dew
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(C4) The ajour  to the left was created for sale in the late 1980's by an unknown artist who elaborated on design concepts borrowed from the bis. Carved from a sawmill plank, the hardwood used for this ajour was otherwise intended for a mission or government building. This contemporary adaptation in Asmat art came about only with outside influence and the provision to the artists of cut lumber.

Lent by Steven C. Chiaramonte
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(C3) The plaque above was created for sale in the village of Sawa by Tetus, an artist who in 1995 combined elements traditional iconography into a contemporary format popular in Unir Siran Asmat.  Elegantly carved from a sawmill plank, the hardwood used for this plaque may otherwise have been put to use building a house in this "high-impact" area of Asmat. This work and others similar to it in the exhibition illustrate a style which has created a foundation for significant trade in the less remote Unir Siran Asmat.

Lent by Steven C. Chiaramonte
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(C5) The contemporary sculpture above was created for sale or show by an unknown artist in central Asmat.  Of hardwood with sago fiber, coix seeds and cockatoo feathers, this type of action-oriented image illustrates a recent change in Asmat art.  The three-dimensional story boards as they may be called have been growing more elaborate and are increasingly popular entries to the annual competition among artists at the Mission in Agats.  Collected in 1995.

Lent by Sandra Provo
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(C2) The contemporary "A area" war shield below was created by the talented artists of the central region in Asmat in the late 1980's. Of plank root origin and colored with conventional pigments the artist diverged from the traditional format in clearly depicting human forms, then placing them in "action pose" with heads turned to exhibit a modern profile.

Lent by Steven C. Chiaramonte

Exhibition curated by Steven C. Chiaramonte

Steven C. Chiaramonte was born in San Jose, California and for the most recent thirteen years has lived in the Salt Lake valley. Early in 1992 Chiaramonte was among the first unofficial westerners to visit the Asmat area of Irian Jaya on the island of New Guinea. His visit followed closely the 1991 removal of a thirty year restriction on visitation by outsiders. Returning to the area of alluvial swamp and thick jungle in 1993 and again to lead others in 1995, he has traveled extensively by canoe along jungle rivers and on foot where possible to visit with the people and understand their art.  Having no formal training in either art or anthropology, Chiaramonte has developed a deep admiration for the indigenous people of Irian Jaya and their union with the natural world in which they live. He has made several important gifts of Asmat art to the Utah Museum of Fine Arts following his visits and as guest curator, established the first exhibit of Asmat works to be shown in Salt Lake City in 1994. A private businessman and corporate executive for more than twenty years, professional demands prevented expected visits to Asmat in 1996 and 1997. He will, however, take a sabbatical in April to visit the Asmat once again, returning in May with fresh thoughts, experiences and treasures to share with visitors to the Museum.

Visiting Lecturer Tobias Schneebaum
May 17, 1998

Tobias Schneebaum was born in New York City where he continues to reside today. He is recognized internationally for his expertise as curator for numerous Asmat Art exhibitions,as well as for his studies in cultural anthropology and his authorship of several books which detail his life and experiences among the Asmat and other traditional peoples. An accomplished artist himself, Schneebaum studied painting with Rufino Tamayo at the Brooklyn Museum and holds academic degrees from the City College of New York and Goddard College. He has lectured frequently at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the New School for Social Research in addition to various other engagements. Schneebaum was Assistant Curator for the Asmat Museum of Culture and Progress in Agats, Irian Jaya for ten years until 1983 and has since curated exhibits in Hofheim, Germany as well as in St. Paul, Salem, Pasadena and Minneapolis.  Published worldwide and often uoted, Tobias Schneebaum is the recipient of significant fellowships and awards including those of the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation. He has also attended residencies at Yaddo, Briarcombe, Ucross, Ossabaw Island, Djerassi and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts and was awarded a Fullbright Fellowship to Peru. Schneebaum remains a frequent visitor to Asmat in his now 75th year.