Lot n° 107
Estimation :
2500 - 3000
EUR
Result with fees
Result
: 2 340EUR
Churinga or Tjurunga Central desert. Australia - Lot 107
Churinga or Tjurunga Central desert. Australia
Stone
Height: 28 cm
Provenance
- Galerie Olivier Castellano, Paris
-French private collection
Aboriginal, a term derived from the Latin ab origine, meaning "from the beginning", has become the generic name for those who populate Australia. The Aboriginal people did not pray to one or more gods, nor did they practice sacrifice, but they did have an intense religious life organized around important rituals called corroboree, during which men relived the moments of creation by incarnating themselves the fantastic beings to which their totemic group attached them individually.
The churinga is a mysterious object, flat and elongated, rounded or pointed at both ends, used for ritual dances. It was not used everywhere in Australia, but over a very wide area, in the great central semi-desert region, and in the west, especially in the north-west, in the Kimberley region.
Carved with mysterious motifs of a fundamentally symbolic nature, their foundation lies in the traces left on the sand by animals, plants and humans.
An arc of a circle could represent the mark left by a man sitting on the ritual site.
The intense red color was rendered by the special care they received: anointed with grease and ochre after each ceremony, they were preciously wrapped and protected by a tapa, or animal skin, and kept in a secret place until the next ritual. A highly symbolic object, the churinga embodied another form of the Self, detached from the self. Every member of the community would have had at least one in the pertalchera of their totem, male or female, but only initiated men could see and handle them.
Inscribed in an elongated oval shape, this piece is decorated with seven engraved concentric circles of varying sizes. A fine example, the red surface showing brown tones in places.
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