ART on view The current exhibition does not propose to address these cultural questions again. Nonetheless, in order to clarify some points that have remained in doubt, we have, to the extent possible, selected works whose villages of origin are known—or at least whose places of collection are remembered. 78 The Sepik is an interesting and highly complex case when it comes to the attribution of objects to a particular region or linguistic group. One example eloquently makes the point. A certain type of mask is called Yuat if referring to the Sepik confl uent that is its place of origin or Biwat if referring to the name of the group that used it. According to Mead,12 these masks actually were produced in villages in the area where the Yuat River runs into the Sepik River. They are thus squarely in the Angoram language group. The masks were hung on the façades of the men’s houses, but when a Biwat clan chief wanted to organize an initiation ceremony, he bought one or several masks from the Angoram group and placed them on large wickerwork crocodiles that swallowed and then regurgitated the initiates in the course of the rituals. This single example highlights the types of problems that Sepik research faces and especially shows that developing a map of stylistic regions is a futile endeavor to the extent that it erects barriers in places where in reality objects circulate freely. The 230 objects selected from the Basel Museum and various German museums, whose collections contain untold amounts of material, were chosen with the intent of illustrating the amazing diversity of Sepik art forms. Some of these objects came into the collections at the end of the nineteenth century. One of the oldest, a slit drum of the type that was found in family houses, is, somewhat surprisingly, among the Musée du Quai Branly’s holdings. It was donated by Prince Roland Bonaparte in 1888. Many other objects were more recently collected. Together they provide an image of Sepik society as it existed in the twentieth century. The inclusion of these objects should not be taken as an indication that certain customs or rituals related to them have not survived, and indeed many might be surprised to know the extent to which ritual knowledge endures. All of the pieces in the exhibition were chosen for their formal qualities, and some are among the icons of Sepik River art. Others are less well known, and certain of them are completely unknown. We leave the joy of their discovery to the visitor. THE VILLAGE AS METAPHOR The exhibition allows its visitors to discover the different spaces in a village by taking them on an imaginary stroll through it in order to experience the various uses that objects may have had according to the places they were FIG. 4 (right): Suspension hook. Iatmul, Yentchanmangua village. Wood, hair, rattan, mud, red ocher. H: 126 cm. Probably collected during the Kaiserin-Augusta-Fluss- Expedition, 1912–1913. Ex Barbier-Mueller, Geneva; acquired by the museum in 2011. Musée du Quai Branly, Paris. © Musée du Quai Branly. Photo: Claude Germain.
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