Malagan Figure

The people of northern New Ireland honor their dead through elaborate feast cycles called malagan that culminate in a display of perhaps a dozen or more carved and painted wooden sculptures. Each piece is created anew by a master sculptor from a copyright prescription that is owned by a clan leader and is passed on to the next generation of owners during the malagan ceremony. With its clear rendering of complex images of birds and fishes, this is an especially fine malagan figure. The face at the top is surrounded by a wooden border, which is connected to the nostrils and may represent the figure's last breath. Much of the imagery on this figure seems to be an allegory of life feeding on life: double-mouthed objects consume birds, while birds become fish. This merging of one animal into another is one of the hallmarks of some of the best-known malagan imagery.