We were to the Sing-sing festival, a gathering of local tribes to show their cultural traditions, in the village of Wosilimo. It was organized in a wide glade charred by the dry season, over the steep slopes surrounding the Baliem Valley, about 1600 of altitude, in the heart of Western Papua central highlands. Today this region is Indonesian but until the 30s this was an unexplored area, totally free and uncontaminated.
Tribal friendship: Casarotti tribe with Dani
Dealing with Dani tribe’s men during their celebrations is a fascinating experience, mainly to buy their koteka which makes them self-important.
Tribal chiefs
Their concept of money and beauty, their cultural contents, their social relations methodology experience a time warp, where their past lives with specific items of the modern world, but as application of their traditional ideas. The modernity yields to their atavic culture.
Dani man
This koteka owns to a village chief, as can be seen by its unique elaboration. Usually koteka are straight or with a simple arching.
Spiral particular
The crafter has showed his talent and fantasy because he used as landmark the command symbol, the spiral ring, exaggerated in its tridimensionality, which mirrors the same subject on multiple layers.
Attach particular
This is stressed also in each particulars, designed with closed arching lines, and even in the extremity of “rotang” fibers (these are extracted by the palm climber used also for the rattan) bandages, from where departs the tie-rod bent to the pelvic zone when dressed.
Feathers Particular
This koteka is also enhanced by cassowary feathers, laced with the same rotang fibers. The artist created also another apparent ornamentally bent, in a sight contraposition with plumages’ one. This bend located in the flex point disguises from some complications due to the pre-work which pass through exsiccation, humidification, bending and then again exsiccation.
The koteka is called also Holim in the local language, it is a penis-case obtained by courgette caved and exsiccated (Lagenaria Sicenaria the flask pumpking, either from the Nepethes Mirabilis, a famous carnivorous plant). Our koteka has an internal diameter of 3,5 cm, a length of 34 cm with a ring of 11 cm, therefore quite majestic and heavy to dress up, as a matter of fact there is another lace to sustain.