Art of the Ancestors Mentawai & Enggano Gallery Renovations
This month Art of the Ancestors is pleased to reintroduce our expanded Enggano and Mentawai galleries. Both of these remote island groups lay off of the west coast of Sumatra and are the furthest western reaches of Indonesia's vast archipelago of 17,000 islands for the local traditions championed on this site. In terms of artistic imagination, the finest Enggano and Mentawai creations have a special place in the pantheon of Indonesian art.
The indigenous groups associated with this artistic production are unusual in that they possessed neither the back-strap loom nor knowledge of metalworking techniques. By the late 19th century, the traditional culture of Enggano had been eviscerated, and the ceremonial cycles where women of status once arrayed themselves as bounteous feast givers during harvest and hunting celebrations ceased. Among the most iconic items found in Indonesian art are Enggano's epaku, fantastical cylindrical ceremonial hats. These were topped with carved muscularly coiled crouching figures and displayed by women of the highest status during feasts that included singing and sacred dancing.
Whereas the material culture of Enggano completely disappeared, a few groups living to the north in the more remote areas of the Island of Siberut (Mentawai) made a conscious effort to continue many of their traditional practices. However, it should be acknowledged that the most profound and aesthetically pleasing Mentawaian artifacts were often associated with headhunting, which ceased in the early 20th century. Aside from shields and finely clad daggers of delicate beauty, of special note, are the older sacred carvings (jaraik) that are still used to divide the communal and rear private quarters within an uma or longhouse. These expansive carvings augur blessings and expel malevolent influences from the longhouse.
Older original Mentawai material, like that from Enggano, is today mostly stewarded in diverse museum collections. For additional reading on Enggano, we recommend Elio Modigliani's, The Island of Women, 1894, as well as Pieter ter Keurs's insightful compilation prepared for the Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen and Albert van Zonneveld's study of Enggano weapons and material culture.
For Mentawai, the voluminous work by the anthropologist Dr. Reimar Schefold is legendary. Spanning six decades, Dr. Schefold's chronicling of the Sakkudei of Siberut is unparalleled for depth and scope of knowledge and insight. The profusion of his valuable publications is too long to enumerate here. For a primer on the subject, Dr. Schefold's: Toys for the Souls, Life and Art on the Mentawai Islands (2017) is the consummate publication on the islands' material culture.