Pongo
Painted Barkcloth
Mbuti people
Ituri Forest, Northeast DR Congo
20^th century
Pounded ficus bark, plant dye
15 ½” x 31 ½” (80 x 39 cm)

This barkcloth shows evidence of use probably for a dance or celebration.  Few Mbuti paintings available on the market today seem to have been worn.  The artist’s style is particularly original and whimsical.

$2500

Mbuti artists find a source for their lyrical compositions and improvised geometries in the forest environment that has surrounded them for millennia. In their bark paintings, Mbuti women play with a fluid and personal repertoire of motifs that distill a sensory or perceptual response to such natural forms and textures as twining vines, leaf shadows, animal coats and the erratic flight of insects.  Some sixty motifs are named, but the meaning of these signs lies as much in the lively and asymmetric combination of pattern and line, as well as the convivial process of painting and "dancing" a barkcloth, as in their possible symbolic connotations.