These objects were made by agricultural communities now living in the province of Papua Barat (formerly Irian Jaya). Some of these societies used to make extraordinary pottery which was traded massively along the coast, and produced polished stone axes used as tools or as primordial actors in social relations. European colonisation finally reached these groups, putting an end to an entire lifestyle (steel axes replacing stone tools, for instance).
The 300 exhibits are displayed in a way which shows how everyday utensils are used and deflected from their primary function to become part of the system of social signs, exchanges, gifts and compensation in which a tool such as a stone axe can become a public marker of social inequality, an anthropomorphic substitute for human lives, or an item dedicated to supernatural powers.
The founding myths of the origin of the world, men, women, axes and pottery, variously interpreted depending on the geographical location of the groups, shed light on the world of the Papuans and give a better understanding of the organisation and foundation of these societies.The main sections of the exhibition:
Sexual division: male attributes (painted wooden shields, ceremonial canes), female attributes (nets of plant fibre, wooden gardening tools),
Objects of power: outsized clothed axes, glass bracelets, combs decorated with bird of paradise feathers, Axes: the axe as a tool and its handles, the axe as an item of trade dressed like a woman, consecrated axes which cannot be touched without sacrificing a pig, the axe as a sign, symbolising the status of the young men,
The shell trail: shell currency, mother-of-pearl rings, The “pottery room”: women's pottery, men's pottery, ceremonial pottery like faced jars
Modern times: iron adzes, Chinese porcelain, silver currency.
