About
I am a collector and independent researcher specialising in ethnographic art, with a particular focus on the material culture of West Timor.
My interest began through collecting, but over the years I have increasingly sought to look beyond objects as isolated works of tribal art, exploring their meanings within the ritual, cosmological and genealogical contexts in which they were created and used. Since 2013, repeated visits to West Timor have gradually developed into field research focused especially on Atoni and Tetun communities.
This website brings together selected works gathered through these years of collecting and research, with particular attention to the relationship between material culture, ritual practice and local tradition.
I also deal in ethnographic objects from other regions of Indonesia and, more selectively, from other parts of the world.
An old man in front of an ume kbubu, Amanuban, West Timor, 2017.
A pair of statues acquaired in West Timor, but possibly from Timor Leste
Pak Selus and an assistant sacrificing a chicken at the external altar. West Timor, 2023.
How my way of looking changed
When I first became interested in tribal art, I was fascinated by what I then perceived as its raw and powerful character. The objects seemed inseparable from the distant landscapes and cultures they came from, and much of their appeal lay precisely in that sense of otherness.
With time, repeated journeys to Indonesia — and especially to West Timor — changed the way I looked at them. Collecting increasingly led to study, field documentation, and an attempt to understand these objects within the systems of belief, ritual practices and social relations to which they belonged.
I still respond strongly to the aesthetic presence of an object — its form, surface, material and traces of use. But today this is only the beginning. What interests me most is the point at which the object opens onto a wider world of meanings and practices.
At the fenced altar, beside the carved anthropomorphic ai toos. Tetun area, West Timor, 2019.
Where the pieces come from
Most of the objects presented here come from eastern Indonesia, and a large part of them from West Timor, where I have travelled regularly since 2013. Others come from Borneo, Sumatra, Flores and elsewhere in the archipelago. Where I know the circumstances in which a piece was made, used or acquired, that information is given with the object.
I also handle material from other regions, acquired through established suppliers and fellow collectors
Contact us
e-mail: albertbs80@gmail.com
Telephone: 0039 328 82 45 149