Kiwai Island Dance Wand-Moguru Ceremony-Dick Clark-New Guinea Art-Oceanic Art
Kiwai Island is at the far western end of the Papuan Gulf in the Fly River estuary. Douglas Newton considered the culture here seminal for the entire Papuan Gulf. This figurative dance wand was used in the most infamous ceremony of the region called Moguru. Most early accounts describe the ritual’s key feature being a mass exchanging of wives and “absolute promiscuity.” If that grabs your attention like it did mine, I suggest reading Gunnar Landtmann’s “The Kiwai Papuans of British New Guinea” that discusses his research on the Island in 1910-1912 where juicy details were whispered in his ear by often embarrassed and reluctant informants. The purpose of the ceremony is to collect fluids generated by the months long orgy that are later spread on the life-giving sago palms and ingested by the young folk of the village. I have not read how these dance wands featured in the process but there is only a small corpus of them in museum and private hands. Each has a large oval head with pronounced nose above a narrow handle. This one has a wide smiling mouth with defined sharp teeth and small circular eyes above white flowing lines—tears? The piece comes from the collection of Dick Clark, the longtime host of American Bandstand. It dates to the late 19th century, is 20 1/8” (51.2 cm) in height. SOLD