Ceremonial Textile (Mawa or Maa’)

Sa’dan Toraja People, Sulawesi, Indonesia
19th / early 20th Century
24 x 64 in / 61 x 163 cm
Cotton; painted and resist mud dyes

Traditional Toraja religion, Aluk to dolo, the way of the ancestors, recognizes the duality of life and death as binary expressions of the same great cosmic singularity.
The Toraja people are famous for their funeral ceremonies where their famed ikat textiles would go on view. But Mawa (Maa’) sacred cloths were filled with an animistic life force using pictoglyphs resembling cave art, with images of a tree of life, human figures, water buffalo, fish, birds, cardinal directions, light and dark.