Ilma Savari (Ugiobari)

Overview
A black and white photograph of Papa New Guinean artist Ilma Ugiobari (Savari) wearing traditional adornments
Ilma Savari (Ugiobari) is an artist from remote Papua New Guinea. Born in 1969, into the Ömie tribal group, she was brought up, and still lives, on the volcanic slopes of Mount Lamington in south-eastern PNG. 
 
In 2019 Rebecca Hossack visited the region - one of only a scant handful of white-westerners ever to do so. She at once recognised the power and quality of Savari’s art. 
 
‘It was Ilma Savari who impressed me most: her poise, her dedication and the clarity of her vision.’ - Rebecca Hossack

Savari’s boldly composed and meticulously executed images are created on, and from, sheets of fine-grained barkcloth (nioge), beaten out from the inner-bark of native mulberry or fig trees. On to this canvas-like ground she either paints or appliqués her arresting, semi-abstracted motifs. 
 
Her restrained palette - of ivory whites, charcoal greys, cinnamon reds, and brilliant golds - derives from her immediate rainforest environment. Pigments are made variously from pounded and chewed leaves, roots, volcanic ash and fruit pulp. Sometimes Savari creates her images by stitching strips of dark-dyed bark-cloth onto a lighter ground. (For a needle she uses the sharpest bone from the wing of a bat.)
 
Nioge are a central feature of Ömie life and culture. Made almost exclusively by women, they are used for personal adornment, domestic comfort, and ceremonial purposes. The essential iconography of their decoration derives from long tradition and combines schematic Soru’e (tattoo) designs with figurative elements gleaned from close observation of the natural world.
 
Every pattern and colour choice is freighted with meaning. Nioge play a vital role in contemporary Ömie society in their recording and preservation of ancestral stories and spiritual teachings. Deploying these traditional elements in her own distinctive fashion, Savari creates work that combines a deep knowledge of her ancestral practice with an unexpected contemporary directness.
 
Savari has achieved international recognition in recent years, exhibiting in the U.S., the UK and Continental Europe. Her picture - Eye of the Sun - was exhibited at the Royal Academy, London in 2022.
Exhibitions