This virtual exhibition of the Linden-Museum’s Philippine Cordilleran collections is the result of a three month SWICH residency of Prof. Dr. Leah Enkiwe Abayao at the Linden-Museum Stuttgart.
Herself a member of the Ifugao people and having grown up in a traditional Cordilleran village, Prof. Dr. Abayao currently serves as a director of the Cordillera Studies Center at the University of the Philippines at Baguio.
Prof. Dr. Abayao developed the concept of this exhibition during her SWICH residency in dialogue with the Linden-Museum’s South and Southeast Asia Curator, Dr. Georg Noack. Together they have chosen to call most objects by their indigenous names and to place each object in a category named after a traditional cultural context rather than after analytical categories alien to Cordilleran traditions. All texts about landscapes, cultural contexts and all descriptions and interpretations of the objects are Prof. Dr. Abayao’s. Actively involved in the preservation, revitalisation and promotion of Cordilleran cultural heritage it mattered most to her, to make the museum’s collections virtually available as a resource to all those villages and communities, in which the objects have their roots. For the team at the Linden-Museum who facilitated Prof. Abayao’s work, researched collection histories, provided physical access to the objects, took photographs and translated old documents and correspondence, this was a very enlightening experience.
