Context (Display)
Display label text:

'Pir Natal – Nativity

Eva Tórasimé, Balbina Bám, Monika Mándepók, Maricé Tótinakáp, Vincent Túman, Ravaela Ep, Bibiana Kákan, Virginia Tómbair, Monika Tótirú and Kasparlina Tóyakas, 2018  

Pandanus, lime, ochre and charcoal

Mary is shown giving birth to baby Jesus in a traditional Asmat forest camp. She is flanked by Joseph and surrounded by all the things that are most important in Asmat life - birds, fish, dogs, a lizard, a snake, a crassowary, a turtle, a crab and a prawn, as well as a canoe, paddle, spears and stone tools. Every year the woman of the twin villages of Sa and Ér produce a mat of this type. It remains hidden until Christmas Eve, when it is painted by the women of the community at the main altar of the church. The mat is then revealed to the whole village on Christmas Day.

Sa and Ér, Sawa Erma, Asmat, Papua, Indonesia.
Collected by Tom Powell Davies. 2020.15'
Event Date
Author: Guey-Mei Hsu

Context (Field collection)
Part of a Crowther Beynon collection by Tom Powell Davies which investigates how Asmat people have recognised the word of God in the journeys of their ancestors, and how they have used ancestral forms of ritual and making to forge their own quintessentially Asmat form of Catholic liturgy

The specific contents of the collection were decided in conjunction with senior female ritual leaders, who wanted to give the MAA a complete set of the weavings used in their church. Powell Davies also requested they make an example of the traditional weaving used in ancestral feasts, as a point of reference so that viewers will be able to see both the weaving’s original ritual form as well as how it has been developed within the Asmat Catholic church. While there are a small number of Asmat weavings in existing museum collections, this is the first collection to be accompanied by any kind of research. It is also the first Asmat-focused museum project to be designed in collaboration with Asmat people.

All the weavings submitted to the MAA are commissioned copies of ‘sacred’ works that are not allowed to be sold or removed from the local church building for which they are made. As such they are completely unique outside of Asmat and exist in no other collection. Just as a feast cannot proceed unless the complete set of sacred tools required for it are present, it was important to the weavers that what they made for the museum was comprehensive, showing in full the sacred arts they have invented within their church. Their makers envisaged the collection as a single, impartible set.


Details taken from Powell Davies' Initial report and object list: Asmat weaving and the foundation of an indigenous Catholicism, based on the Crowther Beynon application, "Gereje, 'Enculturation' and the role of material culture in the foundation of an indigenous Asmat Catholicism"
Event Date 10/1/2019
Author: rachel hand

Description (Physical description)
Woven pir, a sago palm leaf mat decorated with symbols of Christian iconography, with fringes at the sides. Made with a cane rod for suspension at the top. Decorated with clay pigments and white lime from burnt shell clay.
Event Date 10/1/2019
Author: rachel hand

Context (Production / use)
This is a pír mat as is made for the Christmas feast. It depicts Mary giving birth surrounded by a number of animals and items from God's creation. This pír is approximately 2/3 the size of one made for the feast (made smaller at my request). In the feast it is both paraded around the church held up so that the design is visible, and then rolled into a cylinder with the design facing outwards, so that sago grubs can be poured into it. Outside the feast, it is stored in the church office, rolled into a cylinder, with the designs facing inwards so that they cannot be seen.

From Asmat sacred arts and the transformation of ancestral ritual: the pír and Christmas feasts. Crowther Beynon interim report, Tom Powell Davies, 21/01/2019

Event Date 7/2/2019
Author: rachel hand

Context (References)

Exhibition tour by collector and co-curator Tom Powell Davis, 'Church and the Ancestors: Sacred Pir Mats from Asmat, Papua, Indonesia: 3 December 2020 - January 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EBXiafDSFA
Event Date 3/12/2020
Author: rachel hand

Context (Display)
Exhibited in the 'Church and the Ancestors: Sacred pir mats from Asmat, Papua, Indonesia', displayed in the outreach corner of the Andrews Gallery, MAA, 3 December 2020 – 30 January 2021. Curated by Tom Powell Davies and Sophie Hopmeier with the assistance of Anita Herle.
Event Date 3/3/2020
Author: rachel hand