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Few people have had the privilege of seeing what are still pretty much “hidden textiles” woven by the women of East Timor at all, not to mention being slipped out of their bright orange protective acrylic bags and rolled off a huge bolster, on to the polished cedar table in the bowels of the old St Kilda Town Hall, as I did last week.
Sara Niner was unrolling the Alola Foundation’s collection of Tais for an exhibition in the new St Kilda Town Hall Gallery. Not many have had the privilege of witnessing the skill and dexterity of these amazing artisans working on the ground in the backstrap looms in East Timor. But, many of those Australians who have, were at the opening of the Exhibition and Forum this weekend. We have seen the beauty and admired the skill but now we were gathering to see a collection from across the country and hear some of the best and most experienced minds apply themselves to questions about the meaning of the tais in Timorese life and what happens when you commercialise a craft grounded in culture and the sacred.
Exploring Meanings, Makers and Markets of Tais - The Speakers
Robyn Maxwell, Curator in the Department of Asian Art at the Australian National Gallery who is the author of ‘Textiles of Southeast Asia - Tradition, Trade and Transformation’ set the scene with an animated and interesting talk that situated the Timorese tradition within the Southeast Asian Region.
Joanna Barrkman who is the Curator, Southeast Asian Art and Material Culture at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, brought us her observations in response to the ancient objects and textiles she is preparing for an exhibition at that Museum in November. Ofelia Neves Napoleao gave us some insights to her experience growing up in East Timor with her Grandmother and Mother who were both weavers. Linda Chalmers - from Oxfam provided a revealing expose on the Oxfam retailing chain’s philosophy and approach to designing and marketing products for the purpose of producing the maximum income for the weavers while respecting their need to preserve their culture. Sara Niner wrapped the morning panel up by updating us about her research into the impact of commercialising tais on the makers lives by telling us about the different models of production and marketing she had unearthed.
The Exhibition
Most of us had seen the difference between tais woven with Timorese cotton and dyes and those woven with imported Indonesian cottons, and the difference is marked. The traditional colours speak of the soil, identity and place and the beautiful photographs by Sally Gray in the exhibition gave us some more insight into the process of tie resistance dying used in the making of futus designs. In contrast the Indonesian commercial cottons range from deep brown and red colours to the very bright watermelon pinks and sunflower yellows, greens and oranges.
When you see futus in today’s world, it’s difficult to imagine how complex the process of making is without seeing it. Difficult because it’s complex, but also because the time taken to produce it from growing the cotton to finished product is pretty unimaginable in the West too. But so is it difficult for us to imagine building a home in barefoot with a machete as our only tool. Timorese culture is alive and well and it has survived as a cutting, carving, tying, knotting, dying, and weaving culture using timber, bamboo, leaves, reeds, coconut fibre, palm fronds and grasses. Not only do they not need power drills they don’t even use a hammer and nails in traditional architecture. These people are actually able to live self sustaining lives eating clean food and drinking clean water in a world where it has become more a fantasy than a possibility.
For those who haven’t seen the tais on a loom, the Alola Foundation provided a beautiful hand carved loom with a lovely work in progress attached. On this, one could see the motif on the warp after dying but prior to weaving. There was just 12 centimetres of warp and weft woven together so we could view the completed pattern. Also hanging in the loom were all the variously shaped timbers and sticks used to weave the colours in and out and ram the warp and weft home.
For those of you who are familiar with tye resist dying and futus from your knowledge of Indonesian textiles and others in the Southeast Asian region much of this is not news. What is revealing to all, in an exhibition such as this though, is the variety of weaving patterns and embroidery styles across just the East Timorese side of the island of Timor which is home to 37 language groups. The diversity in styles and patterns comes not only from the traditions of the language groups but also the influences over centuries of travellers, migrants, colonialism and occupation. Of enormous interest to me was the discovery that the futus woven in Covalima, that are so familiar to me, were found by Linda Chalmers (Oxfam) and a collector, to be very unusual in context of all the other language groups of Eastern and Western Timor as well as the Southeast Asian Region.
Makers & Markets
The work of the makers was well represented in half a dozen stalls in a market run by volunteers selling the tais in their traditional form, as well as others cut and sewn into functional products. Products such as bags, purses and footy club scarves we for sale. St Kilda was a hot seller but there were some grim faces when Hawthorn was found to be unavailable until Christmas!
In this little market run by volunteers with for compassion for the producers, the products for the emerging tourism market for East Timor were on display; serving to remind us of the serious business at hand in the forum, of considering questions of trade, tradition and security for the women, who were laboriously producing them to earn livelihoods for themselves and their families.
Saturday afternoon the issues for these women emerged as we heard of a woman with deep bruises on her hips, etched there by overuse of the loom, as she struggled to produce fast enough to keep up with school fees and other needs of a growing family. We heard of young girls who didn’t want to follow the tradition for a range of reasons, one of which was to prevent injury to their backs.
The Panel
The Panel discussion on Saturday afternoon raised dozens of interesting questions about trade, tradition and security. Among them: cotton growing, health and safety, fair trade practices, producer groups, micro-financing, economic and reading literacy, and the need for dialogue between weavers and those trying to assist them as well as many others.
Some interesting models of weaving groups working successfully in Bali and West Timor were put on the table by guest speakers. Joanna Barrkman outlined the success of the Yaneta Yameta (??) group in Boboke in West Timor which makes traditional high quality work and commercial products. In this case weavers gather together in collectives who weave together. The group maintain the quality by providing the collectives with good quality strong cotton grown locally using sustainable practices. This group has been operating successfully for sixteen years bringing a good income to the people involved because it was linked to a gallery and a market. The other model mentioned is the ‘Threads of Life’ a group based in Ubud in Bali who are successful. Threads of Life was founded by Jean and William Ingram, Pung and Lolet in 1998 in response to the Southeast Asian economic crisis. They run tours, curate exhibitions for their own gallery, conserve and run a shop for the weavers’ products. Both of these groups are said to be successful because of the way the links between the primary producers the market and the preservation and of culture had been set up.
Ego Lemos, is the co-author of a resource book for Permaculture Solutions for Sustainable Lifestyles written for the Timorese context and a community development student at Victoria University. Ego outlined his fears about the destructive power of commercialising what is essentially a cultural practice and said that his organisation would encourage farmers and weavers to grow their cotton in a fence line with other vines. In this way they could still grow large scale quantities without creating a monoculture that required pesticides. Balthasar Kehi emphasised the fact that in the past everybody grew cotton and nobody monopolised it and that the knowledge held among the weavers, who are generally illiterate, should be respected because of the wisdom and knowledge they have in their own culture. Ego pointed out the danger of using chemicals in the growing of the cotton is that it was not only dangerous for growers and weavers but could irritate the skin of weavers, handlers and buyers.
The Panel and workshops that followed on Saturday afternoon made suggestions and recommendations and Sara said she was planning to bring together these with the papers given in the morning session as a resource for friends of East Timor and other interested people.
Together the Exhibition and Forum left me with a the profound understanding that textiles are the art form of Southeast Asia and Timor. The work of making the art and conserving the tradition is important but the role of the work as an artform is by no means the highest role it plays, in fact that is a discursive practice of colonialist cultures that probably has both negative and positive effects.
Yesterday’s forum reiterated for me the necessity of protecting the weavers and their work. I came to appreciate the need to encourage weavers and nurture especially skilled and committed weavers, but more importantly I came to appreciate that weaving as a cultural practice is integral to the Timorese meaning of life. In considering the future of the Tais we need to be looking at the history and traditions in the context of the whole island, working to understand the Tais motif and symbolism as well as the Artisan’s histories.
The exhibition will be open until September 30. Monday to Friday 9.00 a.m. to 5.00 p.m. (Trams3,67 or Train to Balaclava Station turn left and walk down Carlisle street to the Town Hall).
