ABSTRACT
I was eighteen years old when I visited an ethnographic museum for the first time. I felt uncomfortable, a little intimidated, walking between showcases full of old statues and other objects and hardly understanding what I saw. Metre-long pirogues – were they really used or were they works of art? Masks that looked threatening or disapproving. Small statues which I could only imagine represented jolly, fat people. Spears and shields, these I could understand. And sometimes a grave sculpture struck a chord with me – it was the clay, the old wood or stone from which they had emerged, or the still-tangible hands that had kneaded, carved or hewn them. Mostly they frightened me. Would the people for whom they had once been made have been afraid of them too? Who had made them, and what for? According to the captions, they had served to honour local gods and spirits or had been used at the birth, death or illness of a family member. And in hunting and war.
