Reanimating the In/Tangible in the Inawl of Maguindanao

Inawl is the handwoven textile of the Maguindanaon people. In Magindanawn, (Maguindanaon Language is spelled as Magindanawn) inawl means woven, derived from awl, to weave. To reanimate is to breathe new life, to revive, and to bring back to consciousness. As a visual artist and educator with Maguindanaon roots, using auto-ethnography and my poetic voice, (Adams, Holman Jones, & Ellis, 2015), I write this essay through my artistic practice to re-present the inawl and its past and present narratives as a significant pusaka—a Magindanawn term for tangible and intangible inheritance—within and beyond my community. I seek to reanimate the significance of the inawl through a retelling of the traditional folktale of the Black Weaver Princess and through my ongoing engagement with the textile’s cultural meanings. For more than a decade, I have travelled across Maguindanao in search of deeper knowledge about my inherited culture and the evolving state of the inawl tradition. This journey has included archival research, community encounters, art-making, and graduate studies, driven by a desire to respectfully re-present inherited stories and fragments of my childhood in Cotabato City, and to resist their erasure in an age of accelerated globalisation. This essay builds upon my previous poetic, painted, and photographic works on the inawl and draws on Maguindanaon beliefs and practices, and the narratives and teachings of inawl weavers, designers, wearers, collectors, authors, scholars and mentors committed to preserving this enigmatic and now becoming vibrant cultural expression.