2013.3 House door (oromatan)

This pivot-style wooden door is adorned with the carved image of a female with a small head, minimal features, and a rotund body displaying prominent breasts. She stands with her arms akimbo (hands on hips, elbows out) and her feet apart. Framing her smooth form are incised, geometricized spirals which create a lively optical effect. The figure and dynamic composition project feminine reproductive power and strength.

The door was originally installed in a great thatched communal house belonging to an aristocratic, matrilineal Tetun clan. Such residences were usually embellished with painted walls, elaborately carved wall panels, and doors. The floorplan reflected Tetun notions of the cosmos which held that humans lived on earth between the upper world and the underworld. The rear of the house was viewed as the women’s domain and symbolized the sacred underworld where the birth ritual re-enacted that of the first human beings. Following the birth, a father carried his infant through the “female door” to the upper world, which was a predominantly male outer world. This door served as a material symbol, a point of interface, between the two halves of the cosmos.

Seran_Alfonsius: DMA

Tetun people: DMA

West Timor (region/Indonesia): TGN: 7003705

bas-relief (sculpture technique): AAT: 300053623

carving (processes): AAT: 300053149

wood (plant material): AAT: 300011914

twentieth century (dates CE): AAT: 300404514

architectural ornament: AAT: 300378995

brown (color): AAT: 300127490

cosmology (cosmological / disciplines): AAT: 300054294

domesticity: AAT: 300417468

doors: AAT: 300002803

doorways (openings): AAT: 300002767

female: AAT: 300189557

fertility: AAT: 300379149

gender role: AAT: 300055147

geometric patterns: AAT: 300165213

houses: AAT: 300005433

male: AAT: 300189559

matrilineal: DMA

patterns (design elements): AAT: 300010108

power: AAT: 300374809

sacred sites (locations): AAT: 300386998

space (general physical property): AAT: 300404143

spirals (geometric figures): AAT: 300163114

underworld (doctrinal concept): AAT: 300343823

From 1975: Asher Eskenasy, Paris

c. 1993-97: Thomas Murray, purchased from above 

1997-2012: Dr. Albert and Elissa Yellin, Los Angeles

2012: Diane and Andyan Rahardja 

2013: Dallas Museum of Art, gift of Diane Ansberry Rahardja and Andyan Rahardja 

The main source for this provenance is the acquisition proposal dated March 11, 2013, copy in Dallas Museum of Art Collections Records object file. 

Apply to objects where number equals 2013.3