Tecendo o (pós)colonialismo em Timor-Leste: o tais como objecto de memórias praticadas

Abstract

The Timorese tais (ikat) emerges from an ancestral textile practice, exclusively feminine, which passes orally and by demonstration from mother to daughter, granddaughter or daughter-in-law, establishing itself in collective and individual experiences. If the technological complexity and the regional stylistic diversity have been analysed in depth in the context of East Timor reconstruction, albeit in a scarce and circumscribed manner, the policies of memory inscribed in and conveyed by the textile in its relationship with contemporary art and curatorship are practically non-existent.

As an object of cultural heritage intrinsic to the history of the territory and as an artistic, sacred, and everyday object subjected to various transformations, the tais conveys many stories: the pre-colonial, the colonial and the neo-colonial. It also conveys women’s stories, materialising, in that sense, as an object of the past, present, and future.

How and when were those stories changed and overlapped? What imaginaries are put into practice? And how can they redeem a past and relate it to the future? In this article, I focus on two curatorial perspectives that deal with the tais as material reference in a different manner: the historical exhibition, Textiles of Timor, Island in the Woven Sea (2014-15) and the contemporary exhibition, Elastic / Borracha / Elastic (2014). Through the concept of practiced memories conducted by tais, in the first exhibition, I expose layers from the colonial and neo-colonial periods that somehow continue the theme of the exhibition, emphasising ambivalent aspects of collective Timorese memory; in the second exhibition, I consider contemporary practices that relocate the imagery and ancestral power of the tais, reinforcing its contemporaneity. This analyses result in compulsory questions for an updated debate around the memories of colonised subjects and objects.

Keywords: tais; practiced memory; weavers; contemporary art; curatorship; exhibitions.