Figure with gra or garra hooks

In 1971, Philip Goldman organized an exhibition in London that brought abstract art from the Upper Korowori and Hunstein Mountains to Europe. The catalog featured a group of thirty pieces, the apotheosis of the style and the jewel in the crown of the collections made by the British dealer, collector and anthropologist in Papua New Guinea between 1957 and 1969.

Even today, this crochet figure stands out as the most remarkable achievement in the degree of abstraction attained by Bahinemo art. The human face – unstructured – can be discerned in the uncertain outline of the two-dimensional face, from which divergent tubular eyes emerge. Powerfully structured in space, the hornbill beak-shaped hooks are aligned on the median axis, the curves of some responding to those of others.

Garra(ge’rä) is the word used by the Bahinemo people. These hooked figures were hung in the House of Men along with other cult objects. During initiation ceremonies, they were held between the dancer’s legs. According to Douglas ^Newton1 ” garra are identified both with bush spirits and with the elderly men of the clan, the only ones authorized to consume the flesh of hornbills (symbolized by the hooks) that nest in the places where the spirits live.”