8. Aibom from the collection of AACHS Art Collection

8. Aibom

Clay

These clay containers are from the Aibom Village. The pots have clay relief faces of ancestral beings. The clay detail is highlighted with white and black ochre. These pots were collected in the 1960’s. Aibom village is on the edge of the inland lake system in the middle Sepik called the Chambri Lakes. The area can only be reached by canoe that can travel the narrow water ways choked by logs and floating islands of grass. Its isolation and inaccessibility accounted for the lateness of European contact, in contrast to the middle Sepik villages. Aibom pottery was and still is a precious item of exchange. Sago and fish form the stable diet of the Aibom people and in order to secure sago which they do not gather or process themselves they rely on trade with the bush people living in the hill country behind the lakes and villages of the middle Sepik.