Sepik — L’Art au long du fleuve — Musée du quai Branly — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: October 27, 2015 → February 7, 2016

Sepik, Art along the river is the first exhibition in France dedicated to the arts of the peoples from the largest river in the north of Papua New Guinea; the exhibition includes an unseen selection of 230 masterpieces. Settled on the banks of the river and its tributaries for several millennia, the inhabitants of Sepik have evolved in a world where every object may be sculpted, carved or painted with animal, human or abstract motifs. Sculpture, needlework, pottery, drums, shaped skulls, used every day or only during ceremonies, these objects are decorated with images or signs connected to nature and human or animal ancestral figures.The exhibition conjures up the setting of a traditional village with public spaces open to everyone and majestic homes built on alleyways accessible only to the initiated. It reveals the major ancestral figures and explains the multiple forms and variations in which they are depicted.

Curators: Philippe Peltier, Head of the Oceania-Insulindia collections at the musée du quai Branly and Markus Schindlbeck, Head of the Oceania and Australia Collections at the Ethnological Museum of Berlin.

Scientific Advisor: Christian Kaufmann, Honorary Curator, former Head of the Oceania Collection at the Museum der Kulturen in Basel.