Naga Art

The Naga People is a name given to a group of 16–20 tribes living in the hilly north-eastern part of Indian state of Nagaland. Numbering between 2.5 and 3.5 million, the Naga are descended from ethnic races in China, Tibet, and Myanmar; a minority of the Naga people remain across the Indian border in northern Burma / Myanmar.

The Naga Peoples are well known for their artworks and elaborate architecture that are at the heart of their spiritual and cultural lives. The Morung Ceremonial Houses are architectural wonders but they are also filled with ritual artworks both inside & outside that connect the living with their ancestors, genealogy & mythology.

The Morung houses with its rich decorations made the Naga famous for their wood craftsmanship. The specialist artists carve large wooden panels for the Morung house from single pieces of wood, with ancestral figures that symbolize their rituals and mythical figures, also carved human skulls and head-hunting scenes and totemic animals buffalos, tigers, lizards.

The Morung Ceremonial Houses fulfils various functions, it is a sleeping place for the young unmarried men and in former raiding days it served as a guard-house for the warriors. Young people staying in the Morung learn about social practises and beliefs from their elders and initiation ceremonies, festivals and other rituals.

Functional objects such as husking table or dishes and small ornaments might be carved by any man but the grand-scale carving of house-posts, grave effigies, village gates and log-gongs are done by ritual specialists or carved on special occasions.

At Oceanic Arts Australia we show Nagaland artworks along with related cultures from the aboriginal peoples of Taiwan, The Ifugao People of the Philippines, Tribal Art of the Indonesian Archipelago, SE Asia & New Guinea & the Pacific Islands, you will see visually how these artworks relate to each other and how they look displayed together.