Wooden Kareau statue

Kareau figure of carved and painted wood, anthropomorphic, representing standing male with wings and European clothes, from Nicobar Islands, Bay of Bengal, 1880-1925

This kareau figure, or ‘scare-devil’, is from the Nicobar Islands in Southeast Asia. It was created to deter spirits believed to bring bad luck or disease. Nicobarese people placed them outside their homes. Carved by a spiritual healer called a menluana, the figures took various forms. This one appears dressed in Western clothing, reflecting encounters with European colonisers. Its wings represent ancestral spirits.

The statue was presented to the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum by R. F. Lowis, a colonial administrator in the Andaman Islands, which neighbour the Nicobar Islands.