A Walk Through Tradition

A traditional textile cannot be understood in isolation from its cultural context and its ecological setting. The visual structure of the woven sections and motif fields of a traditional cloth are related to the visual structures of many other aspects of material culture. Sometimes the correspondence is explicit. Elsewhere the connection is more intuitive. In both cases, the material culture articulates a shared understanding of the rhythms of life, the etiquette of customary behaviour, and the conditions under which these norms are expressed. This embodied understanding is felt rather than intellectualised, and the feeling is for the harmonics, polyrhythms, and orchestrations of a shared worldview in a particular landscape. 

Uma, a traditional Sumbanese house.

When one enters a Sumbanese traditional house, the steps, called tundu liti peri wihi, are the first part of the house, visible from the outside. The wihi lindi panggari bangga is the base of the house where people clean their feet before stepping up to the porch. From here, you encounter the bangga or porch, and the taluara kaheli central living area. Above the living area is the essential part of a traditional house, called the hindi. This is located in the attic at the highest point of the house and is where Marapu ancestors reside and from where they take care of the well-being of all their descendents. In short, the closer to the centre and apex of the house, the more sacred the space.

The visual structure of a hinggi man’s hip cloth follows this same pattern. The rumata fringes and the kabakil woven section that separates the fringe from the woven cloth echo the steps and porch. The hawur end fields of motif correspond to the central living area of the house. While the kunduduku, the centre field of cloth that is placed across the kundu or shoulder, is where the Marapu ancestors reside in both the past and future realms, just as we glance over our shoulder behind us and turn to look forward.

A hinggi is worn as a reminder to be aware that you bear the responsibility of carrying the knowledge from your ancestors into the present. Wearing a hinggi, living in an ancestral Uma home, and being Sumbanese mean one is always surrounded and guided by Marapu.

Less explicitly, correspondences like those between hinggi and uma extend out into the landscape. The structure of the ancestral village, the place of the village in the watershed, ritual relationships between communities, and many other equivalences extend and rearticulate these patterns of relationship and reciprocity into a web of aliveness to which a Sumbanese may turn for wisdom and guidance.

Ikat tied, dyed and woven in Sumba, 2022. Size 300 x 116 cm / 118 x 45.5 in