Crocodile men

Tribes in the East Sepik province of Papa New Guinea to this day still practice an ancient initiation ceremony. A way of testing and introducing adolescents into manhood, the ceremony is a strenuous and painful process, that leaves the men’s skins scarred all over; the effect resembling the crocodile scales.
The meaning behind this ceremony has deeply spiritual and symbolic connotations. The tribe’s people believe that the scars are crocodiles teeth that have swallowed the adolescents and morphed them into ‘crocodile men’.

Practicing with latex and beans on the skin.
today we experimented with scarification.playing with beans string and rice.

I am happy with how they came out the foundation looks patchy like clay and the beans look like an infection that has been made into a possible pattern...