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Part Three: Shuttling between Worlds [Contains Image Plates]
- University of Hawai'i Press
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Part Three: Shuttling between Worlds [54.147.30.127] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 08:46 GMT) Anyone can own anything from anywhere. —Sally Price, Primitive Art in Civilized Places The previous chapters have described episodes in the lives of specific people of eastern Sumba as they are connected in some way with fabrics. The next two chapters enter environments where the lives and creations of some of these people converge with those from the outside world. These meetings follow the intersecting routes of textile trade and international tourism and take place on and away from the island. As we have seen, connections with foreigners long have been markers of status for people in Sumba. Examples of recent connections follow—in their numerous manifestations. Sally Price’s statement on a current global condition characterizes something of the relationship in which, at least in East Sumba, the local and the foreign meet. With a growing awareness that image is reality in their presentations of themselves to outsiders, many Sumbanese exploit the yearnings that draw foreign seekers into their villages. The tension between outsiders and insiders— between knowledge and ignorance—is the currency with which various Sumbanese pursue and sometimes realize profit. Gaps in information and forms of desire are interpreted and exploited in constructing images for a global consumer culture, images that often reflect the nature and variety of the links between a “first world” discourse and a “third world” response. The kinds of knowledge arising from encounters with outsiders differs greatly among people involved in textile production and trade in Sumba, yet each person devises schemes toward empowerment in local settings. Although the previous recounting of Umbu Pari’s kangaroo motifs, Martha’s neutered figures, and Ana Humba’s adventurous travel itineraries may seem like isolated tales of eccentricity, they are examples (among many) of individual acts toward reformulating identities in an ever-changing world. Inasmuch as such acts are facilitated or thwarted by the commerce and lore in which people participate, the conceptual and political worlds of East Sumba’s social mix becomes articulated in a variety of gestures and episodes that enlist (or resist) new forces in local life. [54.147.30.127] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 08:46 GMT) Plate 1. Flaunting fabrics for sale to outsiders from a village verandah, Prailiu. Plate 2. Musicians and dancers in local cloth (and imported shirts) at a village festival. Plate 3. A weekly market during the dry season in eastern Sumba. Plate 4. An ikat hinggi (seen in half its length) draped over a line. Motifs include crocodiles, birds, and skull trees. Design on the other side is identical. Plate 5. An ikatclad statue of Christ beckoning in front of a church in Waingapu. Plate 6. A maramba couple poses at a family grave. The husband wears a hinggi set (across his shoulder and on his lower body) and a headcloth (tera) in combination with a "Sumba" T-shirt. IIis wife wears a lau with a blouse imported from Jalmrta. On her head sits II tortoiseshell comb. [54.147.30.127] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 08:46 GMT) Pillte 7. A fabric-draped coffin holds the hody of a woman wrapped in fifty ikat 1li1l~~i. The hody is removed from the hox at the grave, then huried in all of the fahrics that wrap it. Pillte 8. A paw/a trade cloth (from the Gujarat area of India) owned hy a nohlc family in East Sumba. Although the :Ige of this cloth is uncertain, similnr fnhrics were trading through thc Indonc:;ian nrchipclngo sincc nt lcast the fifteenth ccntury. Thcy are c:;pcciall ~' prilcd as prestigc goods in Sumhn. Notc the undyed warp in the hackground with somc motifs that hn\'c hccn hound in palm frond strips, :;howing imnges similar to those of thc pawla cloth. Plate 9. [kat method: binding sections of the cotton warp with strips of dried palm leaf. Plate 10. PalJihllll,4 (supplcmcntary warp) mcthod 011 sidc pnl1c1s hordering n central pancl of ihat cloth. Plate 11. Weaving pahikung side panels using sticks (lidi) to raise the extra warp threads. The same weft thread will weave through the central ikat panel, joining all sections as a seamless cloth. Plate 12. '!\vo village girls wearing lau created through ikat and pahikung techniques and also featuring headwork. [54.147.30.127] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 08:46 GMT) Plate 13. Design inspired by a European museum catalogue of "tribal" art. These figures...