| Description |
This string figure represents a stretcher for displaying a dead person. In the past, the body of a dead person used to be decorated with leaves and put on a stretcher built of poles to be displayed in the village for one day. The dead person’s spouse would paint the body with clay and stay with it the whole time (Hoenigman 2007: 59). The Awiakay stopped decorating bodies and thus using such stretchers after embracing the Catholic charismatic movement in the mid-1990s.
Images:
02: Koek ‘stretcher for displaying a dead body’, final design
03: Julius Aymakan with his model of koek with a ‘dead body’ on display
04: Solomon Karuap, koek displaying a dead body, Vincent Kaŋgam and Julian Aymakan
Hoenigman, Darja. 2007. Language and Myth in Kanjimei, East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea. MA thesis, Ljubljana: Institutum Studiorum Humanitatis, Ljubljana Graduate School of the Humanities.
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