Fate has painted Amami nioge, the cloth of the Ancestors. She explains, “This is how the first ancestors painted in the beginning… my mother showed me everything.”

The zig-zags seen in the work are one of the earliest known painted barkcloth designs Fate refers to as, “Amami nioge (Ancestors barkcloth)”. Interestingly, this design closely resembles the design dahoru’e, the design of the Ömie mountains. The square spaces below the zig zags are called mwe, representing food gardens or food plots. Other paintings by Fate of mwe, mweje and or’e (gardens or paths through the garden) have revealed that the lines commonly seen running throughout Ömie women’s paintings known as orriseegé or ‘pathways’, actually originate from the ancient mwe/mweje/or’e garden designs.

The lines that run through this work are known as orriseegé or ‘pathways’ and provide a compositional framework for the designs.

Other designs seen in this work:

~ The lines that run diagonally through the orriseegé are ije bi’weje – boys cutting the leaves of a tree. Fate explains: “The mother was cleaning the bush to make a garden with her two young sons. The boys climbed a tree to cut all of the branches and leaves down. The branches fell down and the mother took all of the leaves and threw them away. Then the mother got plenty of bananas, taro and yam to plant in their newly cleared garden. When they finished planting all of the plants, they ate all of the food from the garden and lived a long life.”

~ The dots within the orriseegé are sabu deje, representing the spots which can be seen on the sides of a wood-boring grub. This grub is sacred to Ömie people as it plays an important part within the creation story of how Huvaimo (Mt. Lamington) came to be volcanic. It is a traditional sor’e (tattoo design) which was most commonly tattooed running in one line under both eyes. Today it is applied to Ömie people’s faces with natural pigments for dance performances.

~ The short bristle-like design that can be seen is dubi dubi’e, representing the leaf of a rainforest vine that often grows on mountaintops.

~ The curved lines within the orriseegé and intersecting lines are nenyai, a white seashell forehead adornment worn by women. Fate says these were made “in the times of the Ancestors” and are still worn today. Ömie people obtained the seashells from coastal tribes of Oro Province by means of trade and they also collected them from the beach. Seashells were a foreign, rare and beautiful material from the faraway coast so they were highly valued in the Ömie mountains and would be displayed as a form of wealth on both men and women’s jewelry. Fate’s father Lokirro told her about his travels to find and trade for seashells on the coast.

~ The criss-cross design within the orriseegé and intersecting lines are mi’ija’ahe, animal bones found while digging in the garden.

~ The chevron (arrow-tip) design that run through the orriseegé and intersecting lines is buboriano’e, beaks of the Papuan Hornbill (Rhyticeros plicatus).

~ The solid black triangles are mahuva’ojé (mahero mwe ijeh’e), pig’s hoofprints - showing how the garden has been trampled and destroyed by hungry pigs.