Art of the Ancestors Maluku Gallery Renovation
Art of the Ancestors is pleased to re-introduce our newly expanded Maluku gallery with additional items from world institutions that are well documented and in the public domain.
Maluku, formerly known as the Moluccas, is sometimes referred to as the 'Spice Islands. As the name implies, these remote islands are redolent of Orientalist notions of Eastern exoticism and Europe's search for a more direct source for cloves, cinnamon, pepper, ginger, and turmeric, all of which originate from Asia. These now largely forgotten islands helped to spur Europe's Age of Discovery. Since antiquity, and until the 16th century, the source of nutmeg and mace was a mystery for Europeans. These spices were only cultivated on ten small volcanic islands in the Banda chain. Before the interventions of the European fortune-hunters, these prized spices were the secrecy shrouded preserve of Islamic trade networks.
This changed when the Portuguese conquered Melaka in 1511 and subsequently arrived in Maluku in 1512. In turn, the Portuguese were ousted by the Dutch as a period of European martial jockeying for dominion over the spice trade ensued. A short-lived Dutch monopoly based on controlling nutmeg and mace was confirmed in the Second Treaty of Breda (1667) when the English exchanged a tiny spice-laden island, Run, for New Amsterdam, the town and the territory we now know as New York City and New York State. When lecturing on Indonesia, I often jokingly opine and remind my audiences that when Columbus discovered us, he was, in fact, looking for a more direct route to them.
Early on, islands that possessed spices or other commodities of value to the Dutch were purged of their traditional cultural and religious practices. Attempting to protect their spice monopolies, the Dutch effectively swept the seas, redirected age-old trading patterns, and engaged in effective ethnic cleansing practices in the case of Banda. Most of the art in our Maluku gallery hails from islands that were either not of immediate commercial importance to Europeans or created by populations that managed through isolation and their own tenacity to avoid much outside contact, including conversion to world religions, until well into the 19th or 20th century.
Hunkered ancestor figures, as evidenced from a few surviving examples of statuary from such outlying areas as Ceram, Wetar, and Halmahera, suggest that images of clan founders, mythical heroes, and gods were once more widely spread throughout this area than our own geographic selection of items might indicate. Most of the material illustrated here comes from Leti, Moa, Lakor, and Babar in central Maluku, Kisar, Wetar, Roma, and Damar to the West and Kai and Tanimbar Islands to the East. Many of these islands share similar cultural traits and practices.
The region's finest gold jewelry and ritual items, including masks, pectorals, plates, and circular disks, are unparalleled in traditional Indonesia for their age, exquisite craftsmanship, and stylistic range. Also of special note are finely executed wooden images of clan founders and deities. The latter category includes hunkered indoor figures, outdoor village posts, and great house altars and shrines. The highly regarded scholar, Nico De Jonge, has written about luli, shrine figures with raised arms that celebrate female clan founders, abundance, and the source of life. These creations are amongst the most compelling and beautifully articulated of all Moluccan sculptures.
We have also added superb torsos and hunkered bent knee figures from posts as well as rare embroidered kite-like flags and hats associated with the Porka festival, a periodic fertility feast. Among the most unusual and outstanding items from this celebration of the arts of Maluku are mouth masks associated with the dances that were performed during the Porka festival. Five complete and one fragmentary example are known. These are small mouth masks with a bit or flange so that the dancer's hands were free to gesticulate. Each represents a creature totemically associated with a clan. The finest masks were adorned with inlaid nacre or mother of pearl, shells, trade beads, and boar's tusks that reflect masculinity and the life-taking identity of men as aggressive, vaunted warriors.
Valuable insights regarding the material culture of Southern Maluku are found in Nico de Jonge's Forgotten Islands of Indonesia: The Art culture of the Southeastern Moluccas and, with regard to the history of the region, in the writings of Leonard Andaya. For popular history and the story of the island of Run, spices, and the Northern Moluccas, Nathaniel's Nutmeg by Giles Milton is a rewarding journey into events in this region that shaped and transformed world history.
— Steven G. Alpert