Ilma Ugiobari (Savari)

Ilma Savari (born 1969), is a member of the Ömie people, a group from the remote volcanic slopes of Mount Lamington in south-eastern Papua New Guinea. 

Savari’s boldly composed and meticulously executed images are painted on sheets of fine-grained barkcloth made from the inner bark of mulberry or fig trees. Additional elements are appliquéd onto this ground, stitched with a needle made from the finest bone of a bat wing. 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.

 

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 history with an unexpected contemporary directness.