Antique Exceptional Papua New Guinea Polychrome Painted Carved Wood Figure. Slender standing wooden figure from Papua New Guinea, likely a ceremonial or ancestor figure, characterized by its elongated proportions and stylized form. The body is decorated with faded pigments in white, ochre, and red, featuring bands of color and a highly expressive face with prominent white markings around the eyes and nose.

Size: 2 1/2 x 2 1/2 x 16 1/2 in.

Papua New Guinea sculptural art is deeply tied to clan identity, ancestral reverence, and the spiritual forces believed to inhabit the natural world. Artists work primarily in wood, but also incorporate shell, fiber, pigment, and bone, creating masks, figures, totemic poles, and ceremonial objects used in rites of initiation, mourning, and celebration. Each region has distinct forms—elongated, ghostlike ancestor figures in the Sepik River area, bold shield carvings in the Highlands, and intricate spirit boards along the Papuan Gulf—but all share an emphasis on stylized pattern, dynamic line, and symbolic abstraction rather than literal realism. These sculptures are not merely aesthetic objects; they are embodiments of stories, kinship, and cosmology, acting as living links between the human community and the unseen world.

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