Iban Art: Sexual Selection and Severed Heads - Weaving, Sculpture, Tattooing and Other Arts of the Iban of Borneo

Borneo Research Bulletin, Annual, 2006 by Reed L. Wadley

Iban Art: Sexual Selection and Severed Heads--Weaving, Sculpture, Tattooing and Other Arts of the Iban of Borneo, by Michael Heppell, Limbang anak Melaka, and Enyan anak Usen (2005). Leiden/Amsterdam: C. Zwartenkot-Art Books/KIT Publishers, pp. 180, 55.00 [euro].

In this wonderfully illustrated and colorful book, Heppell brings together disparate strands of thought on art, war, and sexual competition and choice to create a general argument of why art, primarily weaving, became so elaborate in Iban society. The chapters run through Iban culture and history, cosmology, weaving, carving, and tattooing. Given the weight placed on weaving, the book might well have been titled Iban Weaving and Sexual Selection, and it is unfortunate that the cover photo is of a tattooed "warrior" wearing a clouded leopard-skin jacket. A better cover might have showcased one of the beautiful pua' kumbu' woven by co-author Enyan anak Usen, but the press editors may have wanted something more visually romantic for their largely European audience than a "mere" blanket.

The purposes behind those blankets and other weavings are many, and illustrate the central role in Iban life that such items might have played: (1) "captur[ing] spirits, [and thus] protecting people from a teeming world of malevolence and misanthropy" (p. 37); serving as a protective barrier against malevolent spirits and as a medium for men seeking dreams from the spirit world (p. 46); "to reinforce curses" (p. 48); "to remove disturbing natural phenomena such as an eclipse" (p. 49); and for "mundane purposes" (p. 50). "Inciting" men to brave and risky deeds was, according to Heppell, the "most profound" of these (p. 50), and this forms part of his general thesis regarding the link between art and sexual competition and choice.

Heppell has obviously put a great deal of thought and energy into this effort (based in no small part on his field experience), from collecting the many color photos of art that greatly enhance the text to the writing of this wide-ranging narrative, which covers description, theory, and personal account. (I was pleased to learn that Heppell's first view of Sarawak was similar to my own, and at about the same time, from the deck of a ship in the early 1970s--he, on his way to conduct doctoral research in the Batang Ai, and I, a 10-year old boy, eyes wide from tales of White Rajahs and headhunters.) That being said, it is hard to decide if the book is meant principally as a serious scholarly treatise or something visually pleasing for the coffee table. It is perhaps best described as some combination of the two, but a scholarly thesis must hold up to much higher standards than a coffee-table book, and I must confess being not a little frustrated as I read through it. Heppell's technical and ritual renderings are largely consistent with what I know of Iban weaving and the like acquired secondarily in the field, though his reliance on South Kalimantan cosmological models (e.g., pp. 25-26) to interpret design among the Iban does not ring particularly true. I would, however, defer to others to evaluate his descriptions and analyses of these things specifically as there are a number of issues that go beyond the art itself.

Despite having been published in the Netherlands, there are no references to primary or secondary Dutch sources in the various historical strands Heppell traces. He relies on such scholars as King (1993) and Pringle (1970) for references to Indonesian Borneo in history, though their work with Dutch archival materials was limited. This remains a severe limitation of English language scholarship on Borneo, and a particular weakness of those working in East Malaysia and Brunei. Although I know of no Dutch study of (what has unfortunately come to be known as) "Ibanic" art (largely because I have never looked), colonial officials were keen to create collections and often wrote about them. Even a cursory survey of the library at the KITLV in Leiden or the National Library in the Hague might have turned up some gems. In addition, I myself viewed a collection of material culture at the Museum Nusantara, Delft--Iban knock-offs from 1920s Nanga Badau in West Kalimantan. This might only have added to Heppell's burden of having so much stuff to work through, but it points to the possibilities across the border.

This general ignorance of what lies over the border is not just limited to historical issues; for example, Heppell refers to women who came from "across the Sarawak/Kalimantan border on the Emperan River" (p. 63). From his nearby location in the upper Batang Ai (where mere tens of kilometers separate cross-border communities), it is likely that Heppell dutifully recorded in his fieldnotes that the women were from ai' emperan, which he then translated literally as 'Emperan River.' But there is no such river, and never was. As I have been describing for 16 years in these pages and elsewhere, "the Emperan" refers to the relatively flat country between the uplands of the Empanang and Kantu' rivers on the west, the Embaioh River on the east, the Kedang Hills to the north along the border, and the wide expanse of the Kapuas Lakes to the south. Thus, ai' emperan refers to the waters or region of the Emperan, not a particular stream, just as ai' belanda and ai" sarawak referred historically to Dutch West Borneo and the Brooke territory, respectively.