On Ambrym Island in Vanuatu, master carvers hollow a single breadfruit trunk into an atingting kon — a towering slit gong crowned with one or more ancestral faces. Concentric disk eyes, deep brows, serrated hair-rows and a curled tusker-pig motif transform a functional drum into a monumental portrait of lineage and rank. The deep warm-brown wood, adze-cut and never varnished, carries traces of red-ochre and lime-white pigment on the eyes — the signature marks of authenticity and ceremonial status. This system translates that solemn, weathered-hardwood presence into a dark, deliberate visual language.