Vintage Spirit Ancestor Mask with Hair, Indonesia, Timor (1211YKM) $495

Description

This rare vintage ancestor mask is from West Timor, Indonesia. Religion there has been characterized by Barbier as ritual exchanges between individuals or social groups with ancestral and fertility spirits having a close reciprocal link between the deceased and the secular world as ancestors require sustenance, respect and attention while humans seek advice, good fortune, health and offspring. Carved masks are a form of ancestor-worship used in ritual offerings for the departed to occupy and have a place to rest during village visits. Household ceremonies are performed in a room called “the womb” where beams rising to the roof struts and function symbolically as an axis mundi. Meaning “pillar of the world”, an axis mundi is a tree, mountain, pole or any tall object that literally or figuratively connects the earthly realm directly to heaven. It is the cosmic center of the world and a conduit to spirits and ghosts watching over the house. Many masks, effigies and fetishes are protective and magic objects connected to animism and used throughout Indonesian island art in what Barbier brilliantly called “the ritual manipulation of fate.”  Considered tribal, ethic and folk art, most masks are ancestor spirits made to honor one’s ancestors. Timorese masks were rarely seen in the West or even in Bali until the mid-1970s, but by the 1980s Javanese influences were noted in the treatment of the face, teeth and eyes. This mask was collected in Bali in the 1970s and is part of the VA Collection of Tribal Art.

Click here for the blog Indonesian Dance Masks (Topeng): Spiritually Connecting the Community

Sources

Jean Paul Barbier, Indonesian Primitive Art: Indonesia, Malaysia, The Philippines from the Collection of the Barbier-Müller Museum, Geneva, Dallas, Dallas Museum of Art, 1984.