A Qantas plane in midair, full of travelers, is conveying Mathias Kauage to the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow, Scotland, where his paintings were exhibited in 1996 and where he met Queen Elizabeth II at the museum opening. Kauage is pictured in two places on this painting: sitting beside the pilot and also at the bottom right wearing his bilas, or regalia. He has painted Queen Elizabeth II at the bottom left, with her bright red coat, red hat with cockade, and signature handbag represented as a fiber bilum bag, emblematic of the bags women often carry in Papua New Guinea. The flags of both Australia and Papua New Guinea are flying on the horizon as the plane travels from the Southern Hemisphere, represented by the Southern Cross constellation in the top right, to the Northern Hemisphere. Kauage stated that, “The Queen is waiting for me. The two of us open the new museum. Later she gave me the OBE [Order of the British Empire].”

Elizabeth Kauage completed this painting for the exhibition Women and Art in PNG, held at the Tuggeranong Arts Centre in Canberra, Australia, in 2008. At that time, she explained the subject: “One-legged, and often considered helpless and hopeless, works very hard for her survival by working in her vegetable and coffee gardens, and raising her protein by rearing a piglet, that is, breast fed . . . she is unmarried.”

Title inscription in Tok Pisin (an official language of Papua New Guinea, edited): Tupela marit i stap. Meri i gat sik na tupela i go long haus sik na dokta i sekim blut bilong em na dokta em i tokim meri long ai bilong man bilong em olsem em i gat AIDS. Man i tingting tasol na tupela i kam long haus na man i paitim meri.

English translation: This is a married couple. The wife got sick, and they went to the hospital and the doctor checked her blood, and the doctor told the woman in the presence of her husband that she had AIDS. The husband was thoughtful until they got home and then he beat her.

In this image, three women from the Highlands — wearing their distinctive feathered regalia — are transported in a helicopter to the Porgera Gold Mine. This gold and silver mine, located in Enga Province in the Highlands of New Guinea, is one of the largest in Papua New Guinea and has been operating for more than 30 years. Around the time Hugo’s painting was made, the Porgera community protested the harmful environmental and social impacts of the mine. This included contamination of rivers and waterways, and violations of workers’ and local community members’ human rights.