The Cantor Art Gallery will feature an exhibition of Southeast Asian textiles titled “Transnational Ikat: An Asian Textile on the Move” from Jan. 24 – March 1, 2013. The exhibition is curated by Susan Rodgers, the W. Arthur Garrity Sr. Professor in Human Nature, Ethics and Society in the sociology and anthropology department; with research assistance from student docents Hana Carey ’13, Tricia Giglio ’14, and Martha Walters ’14. 

Indonesian weavers are known for a technique called ikat, which means “to tie” or “to bind off.”  When a warp or weft is stretched on a frame, strands of palm leaf or raffia are used to bind bundles of thread together to form patterns, or motifs. These include stylized animals, plants or images of spirits. When the threads are dyed, the bindings resist the color and subtle patterns emerge before the cloth is woven. 
 
Rodgers and her students conducted fieldwork in Bali, Indonesia, and Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia in the summer of 2012 to explore the exhibition’s themes.
 
This exhibition of ikat cloths from Indonesia and Malaysia displays over 40 of these remarkable textiles, both in their deeply ceremonial forms and in their vibrantly commercialized versions. The exhibition focuses on ikats from eastern Indonesia, Sumatra, Sulawesi, and Malaysia’s Sarawak.