Timorese textiles and the problem of travelling objects: ownership, documentation and representation
It was during a mission to the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam, as part of my post-doctoral research at the Musée du Quai Branly - Jacques Chirac, that I observed some rather unusual textiles, supposedly originating from the island of Timor, my research field. According to the documents accompanying these objects, whose source is rather uncertain, these fabrics, called kain timur (literally "oriental fabric" in Indonesian), were woven in Timor but found on the island of New Guinea, more precisely on the Doberai peninsula, in the Aymaru-Ayfat region.
They were not used as clothing, but as a ceremonial medium of exchange, and were considered precious and powerful. This is why the Dutch government decided to prevent their circulation in the 1950s and confiscated the pieces from the Dutch Office of Population Affairs in Jayapura.
This Dutch collection of Timorese textiles opens the way to questioning not only the ethical issues of belonging but also those of documentation and representation. So the aim of this article, based on this case study, is to discuss how research into museum collections of objects can be biased and confusing more than it solves.
Bio - Brunna Crespi
Brunna Crespi is a research associate at UMR 208 Paloc - MNHN/IRD (Local Heritage, Environment & Globalization) and LEEG-UNB (Economics and Globalization Studies Laboratory). She is also a member of the International Work Group for Indigenous Peoples (IWGIP) and the independent information platform Youthplomacy. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Biology and Ethnosciences from the University of São Paulo (Brazil) and an interdisciplinary research Master's degree in “Environment, Development, Territory and Societies” from the National Museum of Natural History and the University of Paris 7 - Denis Diderot (Paris). In 2018, she obtained a PhD in Ethnology at the National Museum of Natural History and a post-doctorate at the Quai Branly - Jacques Chirac Museum (Paris, France).
She has worked with local communities in the Amazon rainforest, and her current research focuses on communities in insular Southeast Asia. She is interested in social conflict, cultural circulation, exchange networks, territoriality, the construction and dialectic of identity-alterity in multicultural areas, and cultural resilience.