Women's Wealth: Tuhu (Capes)

Women in North and Central Bougainville create striking textiles with bold embroidered motifs that assert the ongoing vibrancy of collective identity and narratives in these locales. The works – Tuhu (capes in North Bougainville) and Biruko (fan shaped textile in Central Bougainville) are representative of some of the most important forms of current artmaking in the region. The creation, exchange and wearing of these textiles are central to local women’s cultural and artistic expression, identifying the wearers gender, status, clan and artistic sophistication. The works’ strong sculptural forms and textured materiality are enhanced with mesmerising embroidered line work, which is animated when worn in ceremony. Also used extensively by women within everyday life, these textiles are testaments to ingenious customary practices that use natural, readily available materials to create works of great aesthetic, cultural and utilitarian value and purpose.

Tuhu are elegant capes constructed by women on Buka Island and the North of Bougainville from broad pandanus leaves, and in some instances are marked with bold red and black embroidered designs designating their owner’s elevated status. These unique sculptural forms are given names corresponding to the status of their wearer, and when embroidered with clan designs represent some of the most spiritually important forms of cultural expression. Tuhu are worn as ornamentation as well as a protective covering in public ceremonies relating to coming of age, matrimony, death and the investiture of clan chiefs.

The majority of works created for Women’s Wealth were made by groups of women from the Nakas clan of Buka Island, who stitched the designs onto strips of pandanus, which were sewn these into capes. They were led by Kiria Asike, who spent weeks sourcing and preparing materials before the group gathered together in Ngakubul village..During this time, other family members stepped in to tend to gardens and feed family.