handmade zine – Olivia's Atelier

A few weeks ago I started putting together the first physical prototype of Ngayau, a small zine that explores Iban headhunting through drawings and short notes. At first it was just pencil drawings scattered on my desk. These drawings were of warriors and handwritten notes of research I made regarding the subject. At some point these materials began to form a real booklet.

There’s satisfaction after seeing your own work in booklet form for the first time. A PDF on a screen may looks good but it feels temporary and obviously untouchable. But after the pages are printed and folded and cut and glued together, the work suddenly has weight. It becomes a tangible thing that you can put on a shelf, forget for years, and rediscover again.

I wanted Ngayau to feel simple and homemade. Not shiny or over-designed. The process itself was messier than I had thought. I adjusted margins repeatedly, reprinted pages after noticing tiny alignment issues, and spent hours arranging drawings beside explanatory texts. My desk gradually disappeared under graphite drawings, patterned layouts, failed prints, paper trimmings, and coffee mugs.

Some of the drawings were made years before the zine was even in my mind. Seeing them all at once hit me more than I thought, like pieces from different times of my life had finally met. What interests me most about this subject is not violence for the sake of spectacle. I am more fascinated by the worldview surrounding it, grieving rituals, spiritual beliefs, protection, courage, sorrow, memory, and the way Iban culture interpreted the interaction between the living and the unseen world.

Modern discussions about Iban headhunting often reduce it to a caricature. The Ibans of old are seen as savage, primitive, and brutal. But history is rarely simple. The more I explore and create, the more I see how much ritual, spirituality, and community importance were embedded in activities that outsiders typically dismiss as shock value. This zine is not an attempt to glorify the past. My goal is to see it as it is without dismissing it as barbaric, understand the reasons behind this practice, and finally pass the knowledge to others. I felt content when I had finished the prototype. It felt like coming home to something that was meant to be held and shared after sitting in my mind for months.

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People typically consider cultural preservation to be something that is conducted on a large scale. It is generally placed in the context of institutions, archives, or official documents. But it can also happen on a smaller, personal scale.

I have been making a series of handmade zines that are based on Iban culture and history. Each page of these zines pairs a drawing with a text of information or a poem. The drawings are hand-drawn, and the pages are put together painstakingly, one at a time. Every decision, from picture placement to word space, needs to be carefully considered. The whole thing is done entirely by hand.

While working on these pages, I learned that preservation is more than just keeping information intact. It also has to do with how that information is passed on. The information in these zines is not new. They have been told before, and they exist in oral histories, family accounts, and old literature. What I do is simply place them into a different form.

For instance, in these sketchbook pages, I talked about why the Ibans practiced headhunting in the past. It’s a difficult topic that people often misunderstand or only see one side of. I give it context instead of simplifying it. Each section describes a specific reason or belief and is paired with a hand-drawn drawing of an Iban warrior instead of an abstract idea. When I draw, it influences how I feel about the subject. When I sketch a figure, I pay attention to details that I would otherwise overlook.

This zine doesn’t attempt to be a full record of the Iban history. It keeps some parts of it. The imperfections in the pages are part of that process. They show that it was created by hand, with time and care. In this regard, preservation isn’t only about accuracy or completeness. It’s also about continuity, working with it, and allowing it to exist again in the present.