Acrylic on canvas board
16 x 20”
Bilum.
It is perhaps the most significant word in the Tok Pisin language and the most iconic concept in Papua New Guinean culture and artistry. In Tok Pisin, the word means “womb,” that place from which all life springs. But it also refers to bilum bags, the living, breathing artifacts of the country’s multifaceted population.
A woman who places her sleeping child into the sack, the baby’s skin pressing against the carefully threaded loops of the weave, not only conjures for them the safety of the womb but grounds them in the traditions of their ancestors and their tribes.