Papua New Guinea

John Fairfull is honoured to be one of the few people invited to become initiated into one of the Sepik River's Puk-puk man (Crocodile-man) tribes. John was adopted by a family into the Kabriman Tribe of the Kaningara Village, of Papua New Guinea.

Becoming a Puk-puk man is no easy feat.  Before entering the tribe’s Spirit House, the initiates are completely ridden of their hair. After two weeks of complete isolation from the external world, the day of the scarification arises. The hours before morning are spent naked in the crocodile inhabited muddy waters to moisten the skin. Hundreds of tiny cuts are made on their torso and arms, in the Kabriman tribe's design. The only time the initiates leave the Spirit House for the next two weeks is in the morning. Each morning, the initiates are removed of their chance to heal. The emblematic cuts are removed of their scabs by use of thick blades of grass, exposing them to the fresh air. River mud is then scrubbed back into the wounds, and for the next 14 days, their mornings are filled with this aggressive routine. It is a ritual wherein the body and mind are pushed to their wit's end, and where its initiates enter into adulthood.

It is not uncommon for the pressure of the cutting ceremony, and the daily mud-cleansing, to leave initiates unable to complete the ordeal, let alone remain conscious. Some men in the tribe had doubted whether or not John would even survive. Yet after enduring the 4 weeks, John Fairfull had completed this sacred scarification ritual. It was then the tribesmen who re-named John, Nurama.

In his piece, "Nurama", John describes the series of walls that surrounded him during this process. The body's walls coated by the thick, cracked mud, cocooned by the Spirit House, then the dense walls of the forest which he had grown to know. Only those who have been initiated are privileged to know of what entirely happens in the Spirit House. Nurama is one of such people.

John Fairfull, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 2015.

Although John Fairfull spent most of his years on Papua New Guinea's Sepik River, he was able to find moments to himself on land. During his short time on land, he took to his small studio in Mount Hagen. The following works are extensions from the pages of his notebook, and drawings from his sketchbook, while working along on the Sepik.

John Fairfull, Papua New Guinea, 2010 - 2012.