Representing the Sacred in the Bedara Ritual: A Visual Culture Study of the Iban Community at Rumah Ngindang, Rantau Kemayau Manis, Ulu Engkari, Lubok Antu

Abstract

Adat Bedara is one of the traditional rituals of the Iban community in Sarawak that is still practiced to seek well-being, safety, health, and life's blessings. Although this ritual continues to be practiced in the longhouse community, studies of it from a visual-culture perspective remain underexplored in that context. Visual Culture Studies is an interdisciplinary field of research that examines how images, objects, symbols, performances, spaces, and visual practices produce and convey meaning in a culture. This field focuses on the way communities see, interpret, and understand the world through visual experiences shaped by social, cultural, religious, and historical contexts. Visual culture studies allow researchers to examine how visual elements such as offering plates, ritual space arrangements, colors, sacred objects, and ritual behavior in the Bedara ceremony represent and communicate the meaning of purity, cosmology, and the Iban community's relationship with the spiritual realm. This study uses a qualitative approach based on ethnography conducted at Rumah Ngindang, Rantau Kemayau Manis, Ulu Engkari, Sarawak. Data were collected through participant observation, semi-structured interviews, visual documentation, and document analysis. The findings of the study show that adat bedara involves preparing plates and using ritual textiles, traditional clothing, color symbols, and various cultural objects with symbolic significance in Iban cosmology. This ritual not only serves as a medium of communication with Petara, urang Panggau, and ancestral spirits, but also as a mechanism for preserving cultural memory and community identity. In addition to strengthening spiritual ties, the practice of bedara also strengthens social ties among longhouse residents through collective involvement in preparing and performing rituals. This study concludes that adat bedara is a living cultural heritage and serves as a medium of visual representation that preserves the knowledge, values , and identity of the Iban community in a contemporary context.

Keywords: Indigenous religion, visual culture, Iban, sacred representation, Bedara ritual, ritual symbolism.