Wilma has painted old designs of her clan, the Sahuoté.
The lines that run through the work are known as ori sigé or ‘pathways’ and provide a compositional framework for the designs. The or’e (path) designs are ancient and originate from the time of the Ancestors and relate to the intricate footpaths that run through food gardens and garden plots. Within the ori sigé bands are very fine rows of repetitious, black-infilled triangles. This design is called burö’e, representing a cluster of small insects on a tree. Wilma explains how when the insects move, all together, it is very funny.
The conjoined circular motif is vinohu’e, the men’s tattoo design of the navel. This design was applied during the sacred Ujawé initiation rite conducted underground in guai, isolated tattooing chambers. The vinohu’e design is often associated with or even called siha’e design, a similar diamond shaped design. Sihe is a yellow fruit found in the rainforest and often eaten by cassowaries. In the time of the ancestors during times of tribal warfare, the Ömie male warriors had no food while they were defending their borders in the forest far from their villages so they survived by chewing the sihe fruit, swallowing the juice and then they would spit out the pulp.
The designs of diagonal/slanting bands are jubiri anö’e, the design of the orchid-fibre woven waist-belt. Waist-belts are made from numise (yellow orchid fibre), jukire (black orchid fibre) and ninube (brown orchid fibre). They are worn by women to hold their nioge (barkcloth skirts) tightly around their waists.
The zigzags/repeated small triangles are bubori anö’e—beaks of the Papuan Hornbill (Rhyticeros plicatus). Hornbills are the largest flying birds that can be found in the Ömie mountains. In one version of the story of how the first Ömie ancestors emerged onto the surface of the earth from Awai’i underground cave at Vavago, a man used his hornbill beak forehead adornment as a tool to chisel his way through the rock and into the light of the world.
The spots seen throughout the painting are sabu deje, representing the spots which can be seen on the sides of a wood-boring grub. This grub is sacred to Ömie people as it plays an important part within the creation story of how Huvaimo (Mount Lamington) came to be volcanic. It is a traditional soru’e (tattoo design) which was most commonly tattooed running in one line under both eyes. Today it is applied to Ömie people’s faces for dance performances with natural pigments.
Text courtesy Ömie Artists.