Second Skins: Painted Barkcloth from New Guinea and Central Africa

Soon entering its final week on display at the Fowler Museum of the University of California Los Angeles is Second Skins, an exhibition that juxtaposes two separate traditions of fabricating vibrantly graphic clothing from the inner bark of trees: one shared by diverse peoples who live in and around the Ituri rainforest in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the other produced by the Ömie of Papua New Guinea in the South Pacific. Focusing on twentieth century and contemporary iterations of possibly ancient traditions, the exhibition will explore barkcloth’s contemporary “migration” from the body to the gallery wall, highlighting the genre’s artistic inventiveness and the differing ways the two traditions have interacted with the international art market.

Visit the exhibition's official website.

Information and images courtesy of the Fowler Museum, UCLA