Misai - Misajé clan emblem of the river plant

“When I was young I used to live with my mother at old Sidonejo village near the volcano, Huvaimo. I always stayed with her learning to mix red, yellow and black coloured pigments and I learnt where to find everything I need to make barkcloth in the forest. Our ancestors were living in the bush and when I was a small girl I saw Bamu Tenny start to build the town [Popondetta] with sago leaf rooves. At that time there was no school and no airport. Now as an old woman, I paint my barkcloth designs to show the world I am still here, living and painting at Gora village so that my memory will live on, otherwise our Ömie culture will be lost.” – Iswadi (Fate Savari)



Fate Savari’s nioge (painted barkcloth skirts) capture the sacred geometries and clan-specific cultural knowledge of the Ömie tribeswomen from Huvaemo (Mt. Lamington) in Oro Province, Papua New Guinea. Ömie Artists is a cooperative of women who paint their ancient clan designs with natural pigments in freehand onto sections of hand beaten bark from the inner skin of the paper mulberry tree. Artists paint designs inspired by the Ömie territory's lush rainforests, wild rivers and sacred creation sites such as the volcano Huvaemo and Mount Obo. The red, yellow, and black colored pigments are created from fruits, ferns, leaves and ash, skillfully mixed into a vibrant palette.




Barkcloth painting is an ancient art for Ömie women. The first nioge was made by Sujo, the founding female ancestor of the Ömie. After experiencing her first period, Sujo cut the bark from a sihe tree and soaked it in red mud to symbolize menstrual blood and her capacity to give birth. She then cut this barkcloth in half to create two skirts – one worn by herself and the other her husband Mina. Following Sujo, all Ömie women make and paint nioge once they are of reproductive age. Nioge serve important purposes in marriage, funerary, and initiation ceremonies and are still worn today by men, women and children during traditional ceremonies which involve feasting and spectacular performances of singing, dancing, and kundu drumming.




In the middle of the twentieth century, a series of catastrophic events on the Ömie territory led women to start painting their barks with the sacred clan designs associated the ancient initiation ceremony known as the ujawé that involved tattooing clan insignia (sor'e) onto the skin. During the Second World War, an Australian patrol arrived to recruit young men as labor on the Kokoda Track. They arrived in the middle of the initiation ceremonies that only take place on a seven-to-twelve-year cycle, and removed the young men before they could finish the rites or receive their marks. As much as the devastation of the war, elders grieved the failure to complete these ceremonies, which left the mountain unprotected. In 1951, Huvaemo erupted, causing widespread destruction of Ömie villages. Dahorurajé clan Chiefs Warrimou and Nogi took the eruption as a warning from the Spirit of Huvaemo and the ancestors to all Ömie people - that they must hold onto their traditional culture and turn away from these outsiders. The Chiefs therefore spread the word to encourage the women to paint their tattoo designs onto the barkcloth to appease the ancestors. And so triumphantly, the Ömie have managed to preserve their traditional tattoo designs through the women's strong barkcloth painting tradition.



Fate Savari painted barkcloth from a young age, and made artworks for the Ömie Artists collective since the Gora Village Art Centre was first established in 2008. She was among the most knowledgeable female cultural leaders of the Ömie. Her mother was Majaho and her father was the legendary Lokirro, both Dahorurajé clanspeople from Sidonejo village. The old village of Sidonejo was destroyed during the 1951 eruption of Huvaimo (Mount Lamington) and the village was relocated to present day Savodobehi. Both Sidonejo and Savodobehi are highly significant villages as they are nestled high in the mountains close to the sacred mountains frequently referred to in the Ömie creation story—Huvaimo (Mount Lamington), where the world began; and Mount Obo, home of the first people, Mina and Suja.




The artwork is a painted nioge (barkcloth skirt) made by the late senior Ömie artist Fate Savari. The base of the work is a beaten section of the inner bark of a paper mulberry tree. On it, the artist has painted designs using locally sourced natural pigments in black, red, and yellow tones. The are (yellow dye) comes from a guava-like fruit whose pulp turns bright yellow as the fruit ripens. The pulp is ground, mixed with water, and then strained to produce a vibrant yellow paint. Birire (red dye) is the result of mixing fern leaves with ash and water, while barige (black) comes from burning the leaves of bamboo plants to create a dark ash. Within this tricolor palette of finely executed lines and motifs, Savari has recorded sacred geometries and clan-specific knowledge associated with creation sites.



In this work, Fate Savari has painted the ancestral clan design belonging to her husband known as misai. Anie (plant emblems) such as this define Ömie social identity and ancestral relationships to hunting and gardening tracts. Trees and plants are woven into the most important aspects of Ömie society as they hold great spiritual significance to them. This design features branching leaves and buds set within a grid in which the plants reach up, down, left and right to create a dynamic sense of movement. It represents a flowering plant which grows abundantly beside Uborida (Jordan River), in the lands of Savari’s husband outside of Gora village in the Gora valley, between the volcano Huvaimo (Mount Lamington) and the Hydrographer’s Range, Oro Province. Anie designs have become increasingly rare with the passing of the elders, post-2002 onwards with Savari one of the last women in the community to use them in her barkcloths.