Draft:Somuk

Somuk (c. 1901–1965), also known as Herman or Hermano Somuk, was an artist from Buka Island in what is now the Autonomous Region of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea.

Biography
Somuk was born around 1901 in the village of Gagan on Buka Island, then part of German New Guinea.

In January 1935, Somuk encountered Patrick O'Reilly, a French Catholic priest who had been trained in ethnology and dispatched to the Solomon Islands and New Guinea to collect materials for the Musée de l'Homme in Paris. Somuk died in Gagan in 1965. He and his wife Keang had four children.

Artwork
One drawing depicts "the origin of trees and plants and their relation to human family ties".

Legacy
Somuk's drawings were first exhibited in Paris in 1951. O'Reilly retained the drawings

In 2012, an art project was developed by the Red Cross and the University of Papua New Guinea where residents of Bougainville were introduced to Somuk's drawings and asked to produce their own artwork reflecting their experiences of the Bougainville crisis.

In 2020, the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac in Paris hosted an exhibition of Somuk's art titled le premier artiste moderne du Pacifique ("The First Modern Artist of the Pacific").