ULI

Details

a new Ireland male figure
Uli
The face with carved and painted teeth, pierced septum to the nose, the cross-hatched median crested coiffure with encrusted lime, a painted black band about the face joining the eyes and chin, the eyes with inset shell opercula, inset fibre beard, a small figure carved free of the body to each side of the torso, each with fibre beard, two horizontal bands and one vertical band to the front of the torso, each with carved and geometric ornament, similarly ornamented vertical bands to the sides, the stylised body with a band of vertical red and black rectangles below the prominent pectorals
92cm. high

Provenance

Museum für Völkerkunde, Dresden, no. 32902, given by District Officer Bruckner in 1914
Serge Brignoni

Literature

Gianinazzi, C. and Giordano, C. (editors), Extra-European Cultures, The Serge and Graziella Brignoni Collection, Lugano, 1989, p.276, fig.413

Special notice

Vat rate of 17.5% is payable on hammer price plus buyer's premium; the total amount payable is 137.5% of the hammer price.

Lot Essay

The uli cult appears to have originated in the Lamasong and Madak linguistic areas of central New Ireland, where it spread to the coasts and to the Lelet Plateau. Regarded by many New Irelanders as a regional development of the malagan ceremonies, the art shares some characteristics found in the masks of the Tolai of New Britain. The figures were used for rites and re-used many times, displayed in groups of two or three in huts within the men's enclosure. The breasts may be indicative of a well-fed man (Krämer), a hermaphrodite (Peekel), and false breasts were at times worn by men to represent women during the rites. Mike Gunn (Ritual Arts of Oceania New Ireland, Milan, 1997, p.90) goes on to explain that uli figures were images of a life force, rather than a real or imagined person. The images represent a view of the life force to which all those people belonged and from which they all came.

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