Figure (Hampatong)

This carved male figure (or hampatong) represents a guardian spirit or recently deceased individual from the Ngadju or Ot Danum people of southern Borneo. The figure is seated with the knees bent and the legs drawn towards the body in a posture typical of this genre of figural sculpture. The arms are flexed at the elbows and point downwards towards the knees, while the hands join at the fingers to rest on the chest. The facial features include highly stylized large circular eyes and an angular nose in high relief. The figure wears an elaborate headdress with a headband adorned with floral motifs and four foliate projections that extend above the head. The headdress itself is crowned with a bulb-shaped form with trailing element which extends down the back of the figure and may represent long hair dressed in an elaborate ‘ponytail’ coiffure. The figure itself sits on a section of carved panels also adorned with floral motifs, completing what would have been the decorative finial of a tall, typically unadorned, post from which it has now been cut away. These figures were erected outdoors, frequently positioned at the entrance to a house in order to ward off malevolent spirits or illness, or placed along paths leading to houses and as a marker of village boundaries. Hampatong that portray protective beings often have a prominently protruding tongue such as this one, which may well be a reference to oratory or speech associated with the animation of their metaphysical aspect.


Further reading

Florina H. Capistrano-Baker. Art of Island Southeast Asia: The Fred and Rita Richman Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1994