An extremely decorative wooden statue with a high wabi-sabi content (for more on ‘wabi-sabi’ see bartwille.com/pages/special events/fragments of woven beauty).
Coming from a Chinese-Javanese private collection, formed between the two World Wars, and since 2001 in a Belgian private collection, this piece represents a so-called ‘village protector’ or ‘sumaka’ from the Leti archipelago in the Southeast Moluccas. The seated figure, elbows on knees, holds an offering tray in his hands. It is placed on an altar-like structure with two curled upwards ‘wings’, a feature quite common in ethnic art from southeast Asian archipelagos like Babar, Leti, Tanimbar or Lakor.
The statue is carved out of tropical hardwood and bears an all-over erosion, but is still in a good and perfectly legible condition. It it is mounted on a rectangular steel plate.
Dimensions: height with mount 157,5cm, without mount 153cm.
Width body 11cm , with ‘wings’ 81cm. Steel mount 50 x 15cm.
Weight: 26 KG
Bibliographic references:
.Exhibition Catalogue Europalia Luik 2017, Archipel, Indonesië, Koninkrijken van de Zee, p 131, plate 110
.Taylor PM and Aragon L, Beyond the Java Sea, Art of Indonesia’s Outer Islands, Washington 1991, p235, fig VIII.7
.Nico De Jonghe and Toos Van Dijk, Vergeten eilanden, Kunst en Cultuur van de Zuidoost-Molukken, Amsterdam 1995, p 88, plate 6.4
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