Cultural History In Focus | “Material Words: The Aesthetic Grammar of Toraja Textiles, Carvings, and Ritual Language” by Aurora Donzelli

 

House Door with Carved Buffalo
© The Fowler Museum at UCLA | California, USA

 
 
 

Material Words

The Aesthetic Grammar of Toraja Textiles, Carvings, and Ritual Language

 

by Aurora Donzelli

 

This article is generously provided by Aurora Donzelli.

 

Toraja House Door with Buffalo Motif
© Museum of Fine Arts, Boston | Massachusetts, USA

Figurative Door
© The Fowler Museum at UCLA | California, USA

House Door with Carved Buffalo
© The Fowler Museum at UCLA | California, USA

Sacred Textile | Mawa'
© The Dallas Museum of Art | Texas, USA

Sacred Sa’dan Toraja Banner | Sarita
© The Dallas Museum of Art | Texas, USA

Sacred Sa’dan Toraja Banner | Sarita
© The Dallas Museum of Art | Texas, USA

Sacred Banner | Sarita
© The Dallas Museum of Art | Texas, USA

Sacred Textile | Mawa’
© The Dallas Museum of Art | Texas, USA

Sacred Banner | Sarita (Detail)
© The Dallas Museum of Art | Texas, USA

Sacred Textile | Mawa' (Detail)
© The Dallas Museum of Art | Texas, USA

Shroud or Ceremonial Hanging | Papori To Noling
© The Dallas Museum of Art | Texas, USA

 
 

Aurora Donzelli

 
 
 

Aurora Donzelli is a linguistic and sociocultural anthropologist with an expertise in Southeast Asia. Her first book—Methods of Desire (University of Hawaii Press, 2019)—examines the intersection between language and capitalism among the inhabitants of the Toraja highlands of Sulawesi, in Indonesia and discusses how the growing influence of transnational lending agencies such as the IMF and the World Bank is transforming the ways in which people desire, voice their entitlements, and imagine the future.

Her second book—One or Two Words (NUS Press, 2020)—analyzes the transformations in political talk ensuing from Indonesia’s administrative restructuring and describes the emerging forms of cosmopolitan indigeneity and the novel ways of imagining the nation-state in the Indonesian peripheries. She is a Recipient of research grants from the National Science Foundation and the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology and she is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Bologna, in Italy and at Sarah Lawrence College, New York.

 
 

Colophon

Author | © Aurora Donzelli
Publication | Journal of Material Culture
Year of Publication | 2019