Bisj-poles are long, figuratively-carved tree trunks from the southwest of New Guinea. The poles serve as a memorial for the deceased and have been named for the ritual of which they form the centre, the bisj. This ritual has to do with the cycle of life and death and - in former times - with head-hunting and actions of revenge.
Head-hunting, vengeance expeditions and cannibalism! Before long, however, through pacification and Christianisation of the Asmat, these practices were banned. In particular, the Dutch museums of ethnology feared that the associated rituals and woodcarving art would, as a result, vanish into thin air. It was therefore important that the museums would save, on time, whatever could be saved.
Bisj-poles, sculptures from the rain forest, shows 58 exceptional objects from the southwestern coastal area of New Guinea. Almost all of them have been collected as from the 1950s, when the inhospitable marsh and forest areas of the Asmat region were slowly but surely laid open for exploration patrols and the founding of government offices and mission posts. The Dutch pioneers found a culture with a rich artistic production that could not compare to that in the part of the island governed by the Netherlands.
The poles on display are the historical witnesses of a still very-much-alive Asmat culture from Papua. The bisj-ritual for the honouring of the dead continues to exist there, however without the bloody practices of former times. Further, the catalogue offers a look behind the scenes of the museums' collection management that was determinedly focused on getting as many copies as possible of these impressive sculptures into the Netherlands.