This imposing figure, carved from the fibrous wood of a tree fern and painted in white, once towered above a ceremonial dancing ground on Ambrym Island in Vanuatu. Artworks like this were carved to serve as a temporary home for the spirits who oversaw the initiation of men into a higher grade of political and religious authority. After the ceremony, the spirits were thought to leave the sculpture, and the figure was left on the ground to disintegrate. Across western Oceania, carvings were frequently discarded, broken, or sold to European colonizers after they had fulfilled their ceremonial roles. The presence of this work in the BMA—along with the chalk and wooden figures from Latangai to your left—is due to these Indigenous strategies for appropriately disposing of formerly sacred artworks.