1. Context Of The Photograph
This photograph was sent to me while we were listening to Susan Conway speak about belief systems in Indonesia. It is not a casual image. It rewards slow looking and contextual thinking, because within this single frame is compressed architecture, dress, lineage, and belief, all into a coherent cultural statement. Seen properly, it functions almost as an ethnographic document rather than a commemorative snapshot.
Context – the social, ritual, and historical setting that gives meaning to what we see.
2. The Arch And The Threshold
The first thing that commands attention is the arch. It is admirably constructed, clearly of stone, imposing and expensive. This is not decorative architecture, it is much too monumental for that. Its scale, weight and solidity immediately suggest wealth, status, immanence and high birth. As it turns out, this impression is correct, because the arch marks the entrance to an ancestral graveyard belonging to a noble family.
The arch therefore functions symbolically as well as practically. It marks a passage between worlds, between the living and the dead, between the present generation and those who came before. It is a physical reminder that lineage is not an abstract thing, but spatially and ritually anchored.
Liminal space – a symbolic place of transition between two states or worlds.
3. The Men’s Dress: Collective Identity
The men are dressed soberly and uniformly, in traditional Indonesian clothing including the recognisable blangkon. Clothing here is about etiquette, social order, and cultural continuity, so definitely not an item of personal fashion. Their clothing suppresses individual expression and instead presents them as a collective, a group, the people here are born into a group, they're not born as individuals, not a loose gathering of individuals, but a unity bound by a shared role, ritual obligation, and long lineage.
The restraint of their dress mirrors the seriousness of the ceremony they are about to undertake. It signals discipline, respect, cohesion, unity, belonging. In this context, clothing is doing a lot of social work. It is telling us how these men understand themselves in relation to one another and to the ritual moment at hand.
Ritual Dress – clothing chosen to express communal identity rather than personal style.
4. The Women’s Dress: Batik And Status
The women immediately draw the eye, all wearing batik. Not everyday batik, but styles associated with noble lineage. This is where Susan Conway’s observations become particularly illuminating. She has often contrasted batik with ikat, the latter traditionally worn by ordinary people. Ikat patterns tend to be drawn from nature, leaves, animals, and landscapes that reflect everyday life and agrarian experience.
This batik associated with nobility is known as Batik Keraton, sometimes called "court batik". It originates from the royal courts of Yogyakarta and Surakarta.
This batik is still regulated by strict court rules - certain motifs are reserved exclusively for royalty and the aristocracy. The designs are abstract, geometric, and symbolic, expressing power, order, and "cosmic balance", rather than drawn from nature and everyday life. They signal distance from the ordinary world and tell us of connection to inherited status.
In this sense, batik functions much like the heraldic tartans of Scotland. It is a textile language that encodes genealogy, hierarchy, and belonging. Cloth here is not so much decoration as biography.
Batik - a wax-resist dyed textile, historically regulated by status and lineage in Java.
Ikat - a resist-dye technique where threads are dyed before weaving, often associated with everyday or rural life.
5. The Ritual Before Ramadan
The group is participating in a ritual performed before every Ramadan. They visit the graves of their ancestors to clean, pray, remember, and reaffirm their lineage. So this is not only a religious act, it is also genealogical. Memory, continuity, and family identity are being actively rehearsed and repeated. It is probably true to say that in societies where written records were once limited, repetition of ritual like this functioned as a kind of living archive, ensuring that property, rank, and moral standing were remembered, witnessed, renewed and respected in the eyes of the whole community.
What struck us, sitting in the café over coffee after the event, is what this reveals about Islam in Java. Rather than erasing older traditions, Islam has overlaid and adapted them. The Islamic calendar provides the frame, but ancestor veneration persists beneath it. The ritual is Islamic in timing, but older in spirit. It is a clear example of cultural continuity rather than rupture.
Syncretism – the blending of religious traditions into a living cultural practice.
6. A Final Thought
The single opening photograph can demonstrate how cultures endure. It's about encoding messages and understanding the language of symbols. Architecture encodes status. Clothing encodes lineage. Ritual encodes memory. Islam provides the structure and the calendar, but the older Javanese world continues to breathe and gleam underneath.
Nothing here is accidental. Nothing is purely aesthetic. The past is not discarded, it is worn, walked through, rehearsed, remembered and respected.
Bibliography: Susan Conway
Susan Conway is best known as a scholar specialising in textiles from Indonesia, particularly Java, Sumatra, and the eastern islands, with a strong emphasis on batik, ikat, status, and symbolism.
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Silk, Silver, Spices: Indonesia
Conway, Susan.
Thames & Hudson, London.
A landmark work linking textiles to trade, ritual, and social hierarchy across the Indonesian archipelago. -
Identities of Cloth in Indonesia
Conway, Susan.
Oxford University Press.
A foundational anthropological study showing how textiles encode identity, lineage, gender, and power. -
Sumba: Cloth, Stone, Metal
Conway, Susan, et al.
KITLV Press / University of Washington Press.
Focuses on Sumba textiles within a wider ritual and material culture framework. -
Sacred Textiles of Indonesia
Conway, Susan (contributor/editor).
Published in association with museum collections.
Examines ceremonial textiles and their cosmological meanings. -
Batik: Pluralism and Paradox
Conway, Susan.
Scholarly essays on batik as both art form and social code, especially in Java.
Additional Contributions
Beyond books, Susan Conway has written extensively for:
- Museum catalogues (British Museum, Asian Civilisations Museum, National Museum of Ethnology Leiden).
- Academic journals on anthropology, material culture, and textile history.
- Exhibition essays accompanying major textile collections.
Glossary
Material culture – the study of physical objects as expressions of social meaning.
Textile semiotics – the reading of cloth as a system of symbols.
Lineage signalling – the use of visible markers, such as dress, to communicate ancestry and rank.
Why Susan Conway matters
Susan Susan Conway matters because she is able to explain how textiles are much more than decoration or identifiers of gender. Her work explains how cloth in Indonesia functions as a social language that encodes lineage, rank, gender, and cosmology in ways just as precise as heraldry or written law. She links batik, ikat, and ceremonial dress to power, memory, and continuity, helping us to see how societies reproduce themselves materially across generations.
We learnt this morning how culture and belief systems survive through not just narrative, but through what people wear, inherit, and ritualise.
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1. Konteks Foto
Foto ini dikirimkan kepada saya ketika kami sedang mendengarkan Susan Conway berbicara tentang tekstil dan budaya Indonesia. Ini bukan foto biasa. Ia layak diperhatikan dengan saksama, karena dalam satu bingkai terkandung arsitektur, busana, garis keturunan, dan sistem kepercayaan yang menyatu menjadi satu pernyataan budaya yang utuh. Jika dilihat dengan benar, foto ini hampir berfungsi sebagai dokumen etnografis, bukan sekadar potret kenangan.
2. Lengkungan Dan Ambang Batas
Hal pertama yang menarik perhatian adalah lengkungan bangunannya. Lengkungan ini dibuat dengan sangat kokoh, jelas dari batu, megah, dan mahal. Ini bukan arsitektur dekoratif semata. Skalanya terlalu besar dan terlalu serius untuk itu. Dari bentuknya saja sudah terlihat bahwa bangunan ini berkaitan dengan kekayaan, status, dan kelahiran bangsawan.
Dan memang demikian. Lengkungan tersebut adalah pintu masuk ke kompleks pemakaman leluhur sebuah keluarga bangsawan. Dengan demikian, ia berfungsi sebagai penanda ambang batas, sebuah peralihan antara dunia orang hidup dan dunia orang mati, antara generasi sekarang dan para pendahulu mereka. Garis keturunan di sini tidak bersifat abstrak, tetapi ditandai secara fisik, spasial, dan ritual.
3. Pakaian Para Pria: Identitas Kolektif
Para pria berpakaian sederhana dan seragam, termasuk mengenakan blangkon. Ini bukan pilihan estetika pribadi. Busana mereka dengan sengaja menekan ekspresi individual dan menampilkan mereka sebagai satu kelompok. Mereka hadir bukan sebagai kumpulan individu yang terpisah, melainkan sebagai sebuah kesatuan yang diikat oleh peran bersama, kewajiban ritual, dan garis keturunan.
Kesederhanaan dan keteraturan pakaian ini mencerminkan keseriusan upacara yang akan mereka jalani. Pakaian tersebut menandakan disiplin, rasa hormat, dan kohesi sosial. Dalam konteks ini, busana menjalankan fungsi sosial yang jelas: ia mengkomunikasikan bagaimana para pria ini memahami diri mereka sendiri dan posisi mereka dalam momen ritual tersebut.
4. Pakaian Para Wanita: Batik Dan Status
Para wanita langsung menarik perhatian karena semuanya mengenakan batik. Namun ini bukan batik sehari-hari. Ini adalah batik yang berkaitan dengan garis keturunan bangsawan. Di sinilah pemikiran Susan Conway menjadi sangat membantu. Ia sering membedakan batik bangsawan dengan ikat, yang secara tradisional lebih terkait dengan masyarakat biasa.
Pola ikat umumnya diambil dari alam: daun, hewan, dan lanskap yang mencerminkan kehidupan sehari-hari dan pengalaman agraris. Batik bangsawan, sebaliknya, cenderung bersifat abstrak dan simbolis. Polanya geometris, tidak naratif, dan menandakan jarak dari dunia keseharian serta kedekatan dengan status yang diwariskan.
Dalam pengertian ini, batik berfungsi seperti tartan heraldik di Skotlandia. Ia adalah bahasa tekstil yang mengkodekan silsilah, hierarki, dan rasa memiliki. Kain di sini bukan sekadar hiasan. Ia adalah biografi yang dikenakan.
5. Ritual Sebelum Ramadan
Kelompok ini sedang menjalankan ritual yang dilakukan sebelum setiap Ramadan. Mereka mengunjungi makam leluhur untuk membersihkan, berdoa, mengingat, dan menegaskan kembali garis keturunan mereka. Ini bukan hanya tindakan keagamaan. Ini juga merupakan tindakan genealogis. Memori, kesinambungan, dan identitas keluarga secara aktif dilatih, diulang, dan dipertegas.
Dalam masyarakat di mana catatan tertulis dulunya terbatas, pengulangan ritual semacam ini berfungsi sebagai arsip hidup. Melalui ritual, tanah, status, dan kedudukan moral tetap diingat, disaksikan, dan diperbarui di hadapan komunitas.
Yang menarik untuk direnungkan, sebagaimana kami bicarakan santai di kafe sambil minum kopi, adalah bagaimana Islam beroperasi di sini. Alih-alih menghapus tradisi lama, Islam justru melapisinya. Kalender Islam menyediakan kerangka waktu, tetapi penghormatan kepada leluhur tetap hidup di bawahnya. Ritual ini Islami dalam waktunya, tetapi lebih tua dalam semangatnya. Ini adalah contoh jelas dari kesinambungan budaya, bukan pemutusan budaya.
6. Penutup
Foto ini secara tenang menunjukkan bagaimana kebudayaan bertahan. Arsitektur mengkodekan status. Pakaian mengkodekan garis keturunan. Ritual mengkodekan memori. Islam menyediakan struktur dan kalender, tetapi dunia Jawa yang lebih tua terus bernafas di bawahnya.
Tidak ada yang terjadi secara kebetulan. Tidak ada yang murni estetis. Masa lalu tidak ditinggalkan. Ia dikenakan, dilalui, diulangi, dan diingat.
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