Pongo
Mbuti Painted Bark
Ituri Forest, Northeastern DR Congo
20th century
Plant dye, pounded ficus bark
16" x 33" (40 x 82.5 cm)

(shown unframed, but actually mounted in custom frame)

Mbuti artists find a source for their lyrical compositions and improvised geometries in the forest environment that has surrounded them for millennia.
In their bark paintings, Mbuti women play with a fluid and personal repertoire of motifs that distill a sensory or perceptual response to such natural forms and textures as twining vines, leaf shadows, animal coats and the erratic flight of insects.  Some sixty motifs are named, but the meaning of these signs lies as much in the lively and asymmetric combination of pattern and line, as well as the convivial process of painting and "dancing" a barkcloth, as in their possible symbolic connotations.

$3000