ANCESTOR FIGURES
East Timor, probably Los Palos region
Early to mid 20th C
Wooden ancestor figures
Height: 45 cm
From Schefold and Alpert, Eyes of the Ancestors, 2013: "Throughout Belu [region inhabited by Belu people, which straddles the border between East-Timor and Indonesian West-Timor], carved images of founding ancestors are known as ai tos, a name that literally means 'hard wood'. In fact, ai tos are made from both stone and wood and can be found outside the entrances to villages, in and around graves, on stone platform altars, and in secluded spots in the forests where one prays to ancestors. All of life's important decisions necessitate calling upon ancestors, and offerings of betel leaf, palm nuts, tobacco and wine are lavished on them in order to receive their blessings and advice. [..] Ai tos are usually represented with carved heads and arms on postlike bodies or as fully articulated figures."
Schefold and Alpert quote Margaret King who wrote about ai tos before in Eden to Paradise, 1963: "The husband has his hair in a topknot on his head, the wife, smaller beside him [not in our case, where both are the same height], has hers coiled in a chignon, both of them gaze unwinkingly, always facing the direction of the northeast, whence, so the descendents say, these ancestors first came in their long canoes."
Ancestors figures such as these are now quite rare, as Portuguese missionaries, up until the 1970s, made great efforts to get the islanders to destroy them. Bonfires were organized in front of the churches to burn such 'heathen' objects. These efforts have been so successful that ai tos are rarely found in western collections.
Condition: Weathered, and slightly cracked, but very good overall.
Provenance: Field collecting, Indonesia
Ai tos depicted in Schefold and Alpert, Eyes of the Ancestors, Page 264.
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