Brag mask that kills

By DEMAS TIEN
CULTURAL ideas and meanings are given form and expression in many interesting ways. One intriguing way of expression is through the use of masks. Masks normally change or alter the appearance of a person’s face for the period of time in which the mask is being used. The need to alter someone’s face is based on all kinds of reasons including protection, disguise and make-believe or amusement. Emotional responses to masks vary across cultures and on the kinds of occasions masks are performed as amusing spectacles, rituals or for other useful purposes.
When masks are worn, the individuals who wear and animate them sometimes take on a new personality or subjectivity in order to give effect to the reasons and meanings why the masks are used in the first place. Because of the technique of concealment and animation, masks provide a medium through which powers of the unseen spirit world can be accessed and harnessed.
Amongst the diversity of mask cultures in Papua New Guinea is an aggressive wooden brag mask called Gweim from the Gapun area of East Sepik. Gweim was gazetted as a National Cultural Property on December 23, 1971 before being bought by Wayne Heatcote in Mendam village and later seized in 1972. Two years later Gweim was presented by Customs PNG to the museum and got registered as a collection in 1975.
This mask is made from wood, rattan and shell. It has a dimension of 104 x 28cm and is the heaviest of all the masks in the gallery.
Gweim is brownish and has a long sharp bird-like beak similar to the beak of the kookaburra or kekekaur bird in Murik, East Sepik. It has a row of spikes just above the beak that represents the crest of a cockatoo. These spikes are called jaboag and the same term is used for the barbs of sharp spears. The four pointed designs around the mouth depicting a star are called birin. The fish on the brow is akor (shark) which represents the totem and spirit of the mask. The pair of curving below the shark’s head and the mask’s nose depicts the pigs tusk nose ornament. All these characteristics bring out the aggressiveness of the mask.
Gweim is known to people in Gapun and lower parts of the Sepik region as a killer mask and has killed a lot of men and women in the past. The people decided to get rid of it by giving it to Arero; a local man from Karau village who is believed to have lived for more than five generations.
A myth published in Barry Craig’s “Living spirits with fixed abodes” tells more about this mask. In this myth, Arerowas married a Mendam woman and had a son who passed away from what he believed to be sorcery performed by the Mendam people. In the course of taking revenge, he set out to Gapun where a big traditional ceremony was happening. The performance involved a stone spear that accompanied the Gweim. Arero took the Gweim, stone spear and three black palm spears in exchange for a dog’s head that he had brought along with him in his adze-basket oreimora. The ceremony ended and he returned with the exchange.
He used the three spears to kill some men from the Mindimot clan believed to have been responsible for the death of his son. Arero belongs to the Mangeran clan whose rival clan is the Mindimot. Today, whenever the two clans have disputes, rituals are performed to activate Gweim.
Craig reported that Gweim originally had a smaller mask attached to its top which was removed during the time it was seized in Madang after Customs received reports of illegal exports of National Cultural Property. The mask was illegally sent to the United States and ended up at the Museum of Primitive Art in New York. It was then given to PNG authorities and registered in 1980. When arriving back at the PNG Museum, it was restored to its original place.
In August 2015, the National Gallery of Australia staged an exhibition titled, “Myth + Magic: Art of Sepik River, Papua New Guinea.
The exhibition is about a time in history where spirits and ancestors were important to daily life. Among the masterpieces displayed, was Gweim together with four other artworks from the Masterpiece gallery at the National Museum and Art Gallery. The mask was returned in early 2016 and is now displayed inside the Masterpiece gallery.