lma Savari, 'Eje - Breast Plate', 2020, barkcloth, 330 x 66 cms
Ilma Savari lives in the remote Anahobehi village (Gora) in Ömie territory, a five-day trek up the volcanic slopes of Mount Lamington, Papua New Guinea. It was there that London-based gallerist Rebecca Hossack first met the Indigenous artist and encountered her textile paintings on nioge—or fine-grained, beaten cloth made from the inner bark of mulberry or fig trees—that Savari stitches additional details on top of with a superfine bat wing bone.
A traditional practice and a central feature of Ömie culture, the designs of nioge paintings are created and executed almost exclusively by women. Since the works contain a myriad of stories, spiritual teachings, and ancestral knowledge in their carefully choreographed patterns and colors, their makers undertake the role of keepers and protectors of Ömie history.
This past summer, Savari’s work traveled nearly 9,000 miles away from the artist’s home to be showcased in the Royal Academy of Arts’s “Summer Exhibition” in London. Savari became the first Indigeous Papua New Guinean artist to ever be presented in the annual show since it began in 1769. And this November, Savari will have her debut London solo exhibition, “Eye of the Sun,” at the Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery. It’s another historic moment—until now, no Papua New Guinean woman artist has ever exhibited outside the country in a solo show.