Ceremonial Textile c. 19th century

This Ceremonial Textile was woven by Paminggir and is now housed at the Art Institute of Chicago. Notice the repeated image of what appears to be a ship. This is the “ship of the dead,” a powerful symbol in many cultures, representing the soul’s journey to the afterlife. This motif hearkens back to ancient funerary rites where boats were employed as vehicles for transporting the deceased. We see echoes of this in ancient Egypt with their solar barques, or in Norse mythology with the ship burial rituals of the Vikings. Here, the ship is not merely a vessel; it is a conduit between worlds, laden with cultural memory. This image resonates deeply within us because it taps into primal fears and hopes surrounding mortality. The subconscious yearns to understand death, projecting symbolic forms that echo across millennia. The ship's recurring presence in this textile emphasizes the continuous cycle of life, death, and rebirth, a theme that resurfaces in countless cultural contexts.