DETAILS
Artist: Wylda BAYRÓN
Title: Ol Bandi
Dimensions: 60 x 90 cm
Technique: Chromogenic print on dibond
Year: 2014
Edition: Edition of 7
 
Artwork signed by the artist and delivered with the 193 Gallery certificate.
 
ABOUT THIS PHOTO AND THE ARTIST
Papua New Guinea is a little-known country in the north of Australia, belatedly explored by Westerners and still surrounded today by an aura of mystery. Its island territory, larger than France, is home to an unsuspected natural wealth and exceptional cultural diversity, shaped by 40,000 years of human presence.
 
As a professional camerawoman and frequent traveller, Wylda Bayrón has travelled through this hard-to-reach region to meet changing tribal societies whose ancestral heritage is now threatened.
 
Adopted by her hosts, she has been able to attend sing-sing (festive gatherings) and more secret rites, from which foreigners are normally excluded. She has thus produced a series of portraits of beautifully dressed men, women and children, proudly posing in their ceremonial attire.
 
This original work, exhibited to the public for the first time, reflects the essential role of the bilas: expression of beauty and prestige, a link between Man and his environment.
 
Other portraits, representing masked men, give a glimpse of the symbolic universe of Papuan myths, populated by ancestors and powerful spirits.
 
A second part of the exhibition evokes, in a more intimate way, through 4 sublimated black and white photographs, the ritual scarification of the young men and women of the Sepik Valley.