NOTES
The red opening on the belly of this smiling female figure indicates that the figure was made for the treatment of illness.
People living in several small villages of the Upper Sepik valley used body images like this one when trying to influence certain types of illness thought to result from an environmental imbalance. They believed imbalance was caused by a spirit that manifested itself in a rock near a river, a grove of trees, an animal species, and a person. If the trees were damaged, the spirit might become malevolent, causing the person to become sick. The men of the village would have retrieved one of their female figures from the men's spirit house, and after activating it would have attempted to bond with the spirit to achieve a sense of equilibrium that would restore the sick person to normal life.
