The ‘Bilum em Iife’ Exhibition launched an education centre for bilums in PNG’s National Museum and Art Gallery.
UNFPA Country Representative, Marielle Sander, spoke about the importance of bilums in the country and how the patterns were a way for a woman to communicate to a broader community about the milestones and challenges faced throughout.
This partnership with UNFPA, the National Museum and Goroka Bilum Weavers unlocks the hidden messages behind traditional forms of communication and meaning, and it invites to question the silence around women’s bodies, their social position and role in modern PNG Society.
Goroka Bilum Weavers representative, Florence Jaukae spoke about the meanings behind the different patterns and how they came to be.
She said each pattern like the Pik skin, Diamond, half diamond, mountain, spider web, the fallopian tube and more of these woven patterns came from a story of its own.
Meantime, Sander spoke on how the initiative came to be in partnership with the National Museum and that an exhibition is the most prestigious institution for PNG’s national heritage to be publicly acknowledged.