Udeido: strategically amplifying disruptive Papuan narratives in Indonesia’s art centre

Abstract

In 2021, the Biennale Jogja turned its vision eastward. Among the artists chosen from eastern Indonesia and Oceania, the Udeido collective (artists and intellectuals from West Papua, now based in Yogyakarta) garnered a great deal of attention. Through their installations, the group repositioned deceased Papuan leaders within a local mythology that prophesises a redemptive saviour and a promised land (Koreri), fusing folk tales from West Papua’s Biak region with imagery drawing on cultural sources ranging from poster art to bark painting, and the kind of phallic appropriation familiar from the (Euro-American) feminist avant-garde of 1970s. While much attention has focused on the subversive nature of exhibiting such overt critiques of Indonesian militarism, toxic masculinity and human rights, less has been paid to Udeido’s tight-rope walk between cultural revivalism, strategic essentialism and tentative assimilation. This extraordinary balancing act peaked in late 2022 when Udeido spokesman Dicky Takndare demanded that discourse and curriculum on curatorial practice in Indonesia attend to the stories of those cultural workers, whose contributions have largely been ignored. This paper will investigate the conception, negotiation and creation of the Koreri Projection, and the creative process behind this work that simultaneously projects a vibrant connection to ancestral traditions, bears witness to ongoing atrocities and proposes future common ground through contemporary art.

Keywords:

• Indonesia
• Papua
• contemporary art
• collectivism
• strategic essentialism
• appropriation

In 2021, the Biennale Jogja XVI Equator #6 Indonesia with Oceania: Roots < > Routes turned its vision eastward, to parts of Indonesia that have long failed to register (or, have been actively ignored) in the nations’ contemporary art realm. Among the artists chosen from eastern Indonesia and Oceania, Yogyakarta-based West Papuan¹ art collective Udeido, comprised of Nelson Natkime (b. 1999), Yanto Gombo (b. 1996), Andre Takimai (b. 1994), Betty Adii (b. 1996), Constantinus Ruharusun (b. 1994), Michael Yan Devis (b. 1996) and Dicky Takndare (b. 1988), garnered a great deal of attention and praise for their collective installations and performances, as well as their individual contributions. Through their installations, the group repositioned deceased Papuan leaders within a local mythology that prophesises a redemptive saviour and a promised land (Koreri), fusing folk tales from West Papua’s Biak region with imagery drawn from a diverse range of cultural sources, from poster art to bark painting. This hybridised visual cacophony was awash with symbology and code, sometimes borrowed from ancestral sources, elsewhere reviving the kind of phallic appropriation familiar from the (Euro-American) feminist avant-garde of the 1970s.

While much media attention focused on the subversive nature of exhibiting such overt critiques of militarism, toxic masculinity and the human rights atrocities perpetrated by Indonesian forces – ‘in the belly of the beast,’ as Mira Asriningtyas noted (2021) – less attention has been paid to Udeido’s tight-rope walk between cultural revivalism, strategic essentialism and demands for recognition of both the intergenerational trauma caused by Indonesian military occupation, and the contribution of Papuan art workers to Indonesian culture.

In an earlier conversation between Elly Kent and Dicky Takndare in late 2022, he noted the collective’s need to negotiate compromises in their creative work, as they seek the most effective strategies to testify authentically to the ongoing suffering in Papua, in front of audiences who have preconceived, frequently racist and exoticised notions about Papuan identity. This paper, collaboratively authored by Udeido, Wulan Dirgantoro and Elly Kent, investigates the conception, negotiation and creation of the works included in and adjacent to Koreri Projection, and creative processes that simultaneously project a vibrant connection to ancestral traditions, and bears witness to ongoing atrocities and proposes future common ground through contemporary art.

It is important to note that in the process of collaborating, the terms ‘primitivism’ and ‘primitive’ have been the subject of many discussions among the authors. The distinction between the terms, while slippery, is important to make and we detail our views later in the study. Alluded to throughout, the term primitif (primitive) has strong, negative discursive impacts when deployed in relation to Papua historically and in contemporary Indonesia. The term’s associations as a tool for dog-whistling the public in Indonesia, denigrating and stereotyping Papuans, and justifying poor outcomes from governmental and corporate social programmes has made the use of the term primitivism especially challenging. We use the term primitivism here in its art historical sense, which is not, as we discuss at length and is evident elsewhere in this special issue, unconnected to racist stereotypes and colonising impulses and strategies. However, we link primitivism in contemporary art explicitly to a similar, equally problematic impulse of essentialism – through its temporary, strategic redeployment in order to generate action and ownership of the political discourse. There is no intention to support or reproduce, implicitly or otherwise, the use of the term ‘primitive’ to Papuan culture, society or people. Rather, in this paper, we seek to reveal the challenges and opportunities Udeido encounter through their disruptive creative and exhibiting practices inside Indonesia’s contemporary art scene. We begin by mapping out the historical background to Papua’s annexation by Indonesia, the struggle of its people for cultural and political rights, as well as human rights, before discussing how visual artists, Papuan and non-Papuan, engage with Papua’s complex sociopolitical and cultural history.

Historical background

Papua is an area in Indonesia that covers the western half of the island of New Guinea, including the island groups in the Cendrawasih Bay. The name Papua has gone through several transformations, beginning with Netherlands New Guinea (1898–1962) during the Dutch colonial period, Irian Jaya (1963–1998), Papua (2002–) and also Papua Barat (2007–) (Macleod 2015, xi–xii). The transformation of names indicates its shifting geopolitical history, with one constant situation, namely the human rights struggle within the region.

The roots of this struggle can be traced back to 1961, when Papuan nationalists initially declared independence and raised their flag, the Morning Star. The region first came into the colonial territory of the Netherlands in 1828, based on a previous agreement with the Sultan of Tidore (Subandrio 2001). The region was not part of Indonesia at the time of the transfer of sovereignty from the Dutch in 1949, and Papuans slowly developed their national identity throughout the 1950s (Setiawan and Tomsa 2022). The Dutch continued to administer the territory with no intention to relinquish sovereignty to Indonesia and instead prepared it for complete independence, as declared by Papuan nationalists in 1961.

However, the first Indonesian president Sukarno (1901–1970), firmly believed that Netherlands New Guinea should be a part of Indonesia, and its ‘integration’ was a top priority in its foreign policy. A series of negotiations between Indonesia, the Netherlands, and the United States occurred from 1960 to 1962, resulting in an agreement to hand over Netherlands New Guinea to Indonesia, under the condition that Papuans could decide their own future through an Act of Free Choice in 1969. Unfortunately, the Papuan representatives were heavily influenced by the Indonesian government and military pressure, ultimately resulting in a vote to remain with Indonesia (Macleod 2015, 54–56).

Thus following the declaration of Papuan independence in 1961 and the dubious Act of Free Choice in 1969, the main causes of the conflict in Papua have emerged in response to a complex interaction of five long-standing, deeply rooted, and mutually reinforcing causes: historical grievances; ongoing military operations and state violence; economic exploitation characterised by large-scale projects in the resource extraction sector that have also resulted in ecological destruction, expropriation of land and socio-cultural dislocation; displacement and marginalisation created by Jakarta’s promotion of migration to Papua; and institutional racism (Chao 2021; Philpott 2018).

Papua and European primitivism

Primitivist art of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries adopted the forms, shapes and ‘raw’ aesthetic of the art and artefacts that were being looted, expropriated, bought, traded and coercively acquired from colonised peoples, initially primarily in Africa, and later in Oceania and Asia. Ensconced in private and state collections, traded in thriving ‘primitive art’ markets, and displayed in the Fairs and Exhibitions that colonising nations held to enthrall the general public with their imperial missions, it also inspired (in part) modernist movements such as Cubism, Fauvism, and later Surrealism. These objects, for the artists who appropriated their forms, aesthetics and even materials, were seen to embody a kind of ‘Other’ that was – to quote the introductory chapter to the 1991 text on the subject, The Myth of Primitivism – ‘raw, truthful and profoundly simple, a set of projections which is the precondition for the validation of these exotic influences.’ (Hiller 1991, 12).

In recent conversations,² members of Udeido clearly articulated their rejection of the label ‘primitive’, which carries categorical constraints and conjures images of successive political regime's framing of Papua as Indonesia's backwards Other. This term is often used to reproduce stereotypes and generate discrimination against Papuans. In these contexts, the term primitif is often deployed by the state, media and other actors to reproduce stereotypes and justify discrimination against Papuans. During one incident that occurred in 2019 in Surabaya, when civilian mobs accompanied by security forces surrounded Papuan student accommodation, the mob's use of the derogatory term ‘monkey’ triggered protests across Papua. Sophie Chao (2020, n.p.) notes: ‘Of particular symbolic significance here is the figure of the monkey – a species that, alongside pigs and dogs, is routinely deployed in Indonesian popular and official discourse to characterise Papuans as primitive, wild, and uncivilised.’

Meanwhile, the state simultaneously incorporates visual aspects of Papuan material culture deemed sufficiently non-threatening into an imagined unitary pan-Indonesian aesthetic. This exemplifies Daniel Miller’s contention that ‘primitivism may be investigated as a form of ideology’ that is used by dominant groups to ‘project models of those which they define themselves in opposition to’ (Miller [1991] 2006, 57–58), while also revealing the usefulness of the primitive as a category for containing and controlling Papua’s appearance within the broader Indonesian state (Costa 2019). For Udeido, their identification with activist movements within and from Papua also informs their discomfort with the term. Takndare explains:

… Udeido's big concern is indeed that we take care not to let this primitive word be attached to Udeido itself. That's something we really want to avoid. Because Udeido are by nature artists in contemporary art, or can be called artists. But we depart from a [sense of] collectivity, you could call it the struggle in Papua, which sees it all as a unified movement and action … (Takndare, in Dialogue 2023)

Nonetheless, the notion of ‘strategic primitivism’ in which the tropes of modernist primitivism are reproduced in similar ways to those identified in strategic essentialism is a useful one, to consider the increasingly evident appropriation of European artistic tropes in recent (and past) works of artists from Oceania and Asia. Post-colonial scholar Gayatri Spivak identified strategic essentialism as a tactical approach to regaining, or gaining, the solidarity that repressed and colonised groups require to demand their rights (1987). Through the conception of strategic primitivism, Udeido’s approach to artmaking is analysed in relation to a contemporary context in which artists from the Pacific, Asia and Africa reclaim and redeploy the ‘myths’ of primitivism that were engendered through the exoticising gaze of the coloniser, anthropologist and missionary, and visualised by twentieth century European modernist artists. Artists like Lisa Reihana and Nicolas Molé re-appropriate the aesthetic principles borrowed by Paul Gauguin (1848–1903), Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), Max Ernst (1891–1976) and Man Ray (1890–1976) among others, deploying them in the pursuit of visibility and agency in a world where colonisation has not so much died as it has moved addresses.³

In the case of Udeido, another layer of complexity emerges when we consider that their work responds to a contemporary geopolitical context in which the present-day coloniser, Indonesia, was also once colonised (not coincidentally by a shared coloniser) and is also the source of primitivist imaginings in the European ‘canon.’ This complexity further embeds strategic primitivism within the postcolonial analysis which underpinned strategic essentialism, but also points to the critiques of strategic essentialism that emerged after Spivak’s original conception, including from Spivak herself. Spivak’s own cautious repudiation of strategic essentialism focuses on the misuse of essentialism itself, drawing attention to the dangers of ‘something one cannot not use’ while also reiterating the political, rather than theoretical significance of the strategy (Spivak [1993] 2008).

It is in this vein that we locate strategic primitivism: a strategic appropriation of the forms of modernist primitivism in order to draw attention to political claims within a context that is both an archetype of postcoloniality and not-really-postcolonial. The analytical challenge here is to navigate between the state’s deployment of narratives of primitivism in order to other and control Papuan identity, and the risks that artists may reinstate the essentialist ideals of primitivism as they refer to the cultural forms that they cannot not use.

In Indonesia, Takndare identifies a narrative that positions expressions of Papuan culture as a threat to the state, ‘a chronic wound in the body of the Indonesian nation’ that is passed down from one generation of oppressors to the next. He writes: ‘It’s important at this point to establish an antithesis to the product of that inheritance, translocal organic movements can play a crucial role in building efforts to resist inheritance with inheritance’ (Takndare 2022a, 278).⁴

Referring to their aesthetic strategies, Andre describes the collective’s appropriation of cultural symbols from Papuan culture:

We gain an initial foothold using the actual cultural symbols. But not in their entirety. We take them and appropriate them in our work. But we strive to see them in a new way. These symbols needn’t be utilised in the same way as they used to be, but we often try to look at existing symbols in a new way then relate them to our lives, then reflect on that, whether from our respective personalities, or socio-political conditions that occur in Papua. That's what we do the most. That's why the cultural symbols don't stand alone. But sometimes we try to bring them into collision [with other things] to create a new symbol … we interpret that also as a path, as traditional symbols that aren’t as binding as they used to be. But we try to reinterpret it, see it in a new way. (Andre, in Dialogue 2023)

In this paper, we argue that Udeido’s aesthetic strategies respond to the same traumatic, and traumatising history of use and abuse by colonial, political and other power structures as described by strategic essentialism. By framing their work through this shared response as strategic primitivism, we want to acknowledge that the redeployment of these terms in scholarly contexts, though fraught, can also be productive.

The primitive and the modern in Indonesia

During the colonial period, Papua appeared to largely exist through ethnographic materials collected by and photographs made by Dutch missionaries, anthropologists, scientists, colonial administrators or the military.⁵ Emiria Sunassa (1894–1964) was possibly the only Indonesian visual artist of her generation who had represented Papuan subjects in her paintings and sketches (Arbuckle 2011). According to Rosa, an arts writer, Sunassa’s representation of the ‘primitive' were based on her impressions and memory of the people she encountered during her travels in Sumatra, Borneo, Sulawesi, Bali and Netherlands New Guinea (Rosa [1948] 2023).

Sunassa’s paintings are notable because the representation of indigenous people in her body of work signalled a different perspective of Indonesia’s nascent national identity. The Java-centric, masculine worldview by the PERSAGI artists largely framed the strong focus on nationalism and the modern world in Indonesian art and art history.⁶ Relatedly, writing about the quest of Indonesian modern painters in the 1940s–50s to free themselves from Western influences, Sanento Yuliman ([1968] 2020) described Sunassa’s paintings as inspired by patung-patung primitif (primitive sculptures), which in turn inspired the archaic (kepurbaan). In this regard, the primitif is interlinked with Indonesian modern art’s search for originality and authenticity by digging deep into its pre-colonial and premodern roots.

During the New Order era (1966–1998) the search for nilai-nilai ketimuran (Eastern values) in Indonesian modern art became even more pronounced. After the tumultuous period of Guided Democracy (1957–1966) and the violence of the anti-communist killings of 1965–66, as the nation rebuilt itself, many Indonesian artists began exploring a new Indonesian visual identity under the banner of developmentalism (Hapsoro 2015). For example, in 1973 a group of artists and designers from the Faculty of Art and Design at Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), started developing a specific aesthetic, one that is predicated upon the search, dialogue and discovery of the ‘East’ to elevate an Indonesian identity (Decenta 1975; Hujatnikajennong and Rahadi 2011, 463–493). The group, called Decenta, included artists such as A.D. Pirous (b. 1932), Sunaryo (b. 1943), Adriaan Palar (b. 1936), Priyanto Sunarto (1947–2014), T. Sutanto (1941) and G. Sidharta (1932–2006).

Critics have praised Sunaryo’s interpretation of Papuan motifs and symbols (Siswadi 2017; Sudarmadji 1975). Sunaryo’s Citra Irian series combines parallel zigzag lines, spirals and dots juxtaposed with representation (or elements from) human figures and faces as commonly found in various decorative elements from Papua (Figure 1). The series’ composition aligns with Decenta’s modern aesthetic direction, aiming for new visual forms and a universal ‘Indonesian’ aesthetic. In contrast, others argued that the artist’s use of traditional Papuan motifs effectively instrumentalises his art to promote the state’s ideology and, more strongly, as a form of extractive art and cultural appropriation (Hapsoro 2014) (see also Isabella, this volume).⁷

Figure 1. Sunaryo, Citra Irian I (Image of Irian), 1975. Silkscreen on paper, 49.8 × 51.5 cm. Edition?/38. Collection of the artist. (Image courtesy of Selasar Sunarto Art Space)

The critical approach in reading modern art and art history in Indonesia reflects the broader shift in the thinking that implicated Indonesian artists and cultural producers as replicating a colonial worldview. A recent reappraisal of Emiria Sunassa’s paintings by members of the Udeido Collective for the exhibition Familiar Others: Emiria Sunassa, Eduardo Masferré and Yeh Chi-Wei, 1940s–1970s at the National Gallery of Singapore (2022) pointed out the problematic issues of representation of Papua by non-Papuan artists. The exhibition examined the complexity surrounding cultural representations of Indigenous peoples in Southeast Asian modern art through the selected works of Sunassa, Masferré and Yeh.⁸ The curator also involved contemporary artists, musicians, writers, poets and academics from communities represented in the works of these three artists to respond to the historical works.

Dicky Takndare offered these observations of Emiria Sunassa’s paintings:

We have to understand that the historical background shaping the relationship between Tidoreans and Papuans played a major part in forming Emiria’s view on Papuans […] At the same time, Emiria was working when Indonesia was a new republic, and she was part of an art movement that strove to build a new national awareness after the wave of decolonisation washed over Asia and the Pacific. I think this background made Emiria a rather controversial figure because I don’t think we can say that her works depicting Papuans and Papua’s natural world relate to only one of those contexts. (Udeido Collective 2022, 55–56)

Betty Adii added:

I see Emiria’s works as a form of solidarity that was born out of the spirit of camaraderie, and it ought to be appreciated. But I think her works that depict Papuans seem to only narrate Papua superficially […]. “Exoticism” still constitutes the main reason behind the creation of these works. If we position these works in today’s social context in Papua, I think the crucial point is about the value of solidarity that we can interpret as a driver for change. (Udeido Collective 2022, 55–56)

These examples underline the problematic history of the deployment of the term primitif and the representation of Papua within Indonesia’s Java-centric art history. On the one hand, ‘primitive art’ is valued as a source of ‘Eastern values’ in Indonesian modern art’s quest to free itself from Western influence, yet its use is also deeply uncritical of the internal othering of Papua and Papuans.

The Koreri projection

In 2021, Udeido’s work Koreri Projection dominated press coverage of the Biennale Jogja XVI Equator #6 2021 – Indonesia with Oceania. The works were conceived largely as individual pieces by each artist, responding to an overarching conceptual framework based on the Papuan mythology of the Koreri, which prophesises a redemptive saviour and a promised land. Although originating among the Biak and Numfor, according to Margaretha Hanita (2019), the Koreri has been adopted as symbolic of the aspirations of the broader political movement in Papua. In the account published by FC Kamma in (1972), the myth’s protagonist, Manarmakeri, traps the Morning Star as he tries to steal his palm-wine at dawn, and the morning star gives instructions for a course of actions that will result in the birth of Manarbew, or the bringer of peace. In our conversations preparing this paper, Takndare notes a ‘kind of systematic teleology that is rooted in the belief in Koreri that Udeido saw and used as a sort of … paradigm, a method for producing new work.’

In Udeido’s Biennale Jogja work, each artist’s contribution was installed as a kind of station along a journey from repression towards a point of hope or redemption, beginning with Gombo’s mural at the entrance and concluding with Michael Yan Devis’ light installation (Figure 2), which represented the Koreri, the promised land itself. Alongside the projected patterns of light, which were accompanied by a contemporary performance and traditional Papuan dances at various points during the Biennale, stood an enormous figure constructed from a collection of signs and symbols of local and imported ritual and belief from across the archipelago and across the history of colonisation and capitalism (Figure 3).

Figure 2. Betty Adii, Dystopian Reality: The Agony of Existence, 2021. Mixed media, found objects, sculptures, watercolour and pencil drawing on paper. Adii's work responded to the narratives of conflict and toxic masculinity that she encountered in the findings of a 2010 report by the National Commission on Violence Against Women (Komnas Perempuan).

Figure 3. Constantinus Ruharusun, Homour, 2021. Mixed media and found object installation, dimensions variable. The installation includes personal items and photographs from communities living in and around Pala plantations in Fakfak, as well as sculptures juxtaposing representations of the red pits of the pala fruit with figurative elements and fibre art motifs.

Wamena man Yanto Gombo’s striking, large-scale mural Dibungkam (Silenced) graced the façade of the main venue, its background teeming with provocative images of camouflaged torture and violence from which a Papuan warrior is unzipped, bursting towards the viewer. Gombo says:

I made the mural because the situation that I see in Papua, especially for those of us in the mountains, but also in Jayapura, is that the people there are in crisis, because almost every day they are faced with problems related to the military. And then basically nearly every month there are military issues, and there are cases of conflicts almost continuously. In relation to our traditions [in the mural] the symbol I used was like a pig's tusk from the nose [of the central figure]; that’s the clan chief. Then there is a crown of bird feathers on top of that … The pig we equate with gold. In terms of payments, such as dowry or whatever it is, usually the value of the pig is higher. So, for the people there the pig can indeed solve many things. (Adii, in Dialogue 2023)

Gombo explains further that according to tradition wearing the boar tusks is reserved for the chief or whoever has successfully hunted a wild pig, the most feared animal in the forest. The tusks are a mark of pride and power for the wearer. He continues:

We spend a lot of time dealing with issues related to the military, but on the other hand, we're trying to resist all of that, to extract ourselves from that situation and return the spirit that we used to have in our traditions related to the boar tusks. (Gombo, in Dialogue 2023)

Inside the gallery spaces, the journey continued first with, Sentani-born Betty Adii’s sculptural installation strewn with women’s underwear Dystopian Reality: The Agony of Existence (Figure 2), which reflected on links between conflict and toxic masculinity and the findings of a 2010 report by the National Commission on Violence Against Women (Komnas Perempuan) (Citra 2022; Hutabarat 2021). Describing her work, she highlights the juncture between the intimacy of her personal experience as a woman and women’s struggles against systemic military violence in Papua, and how these intersect with the global struggle to end violence against women:

In response to the Koreri theme I made an installation in the form of male genitalia where the penis is a bullet, then there were skulls sculpted from Styrofoam. Around these were specific codes that refer to military operation areas, as well as the identities of several survivors of violence from 1993 to 2019. …. In the process of my art practice, I had the opportunity to meet friends or female comrades who were studying but who are also active in socio-political movements. From there came the awareness and desire to raise women's issues, because as a person, as an individual I have experienced firsthand the culture, or stigma, or taboo that positions women as oppressed subjects in society, which is then reinforced by religion or culture … [F]emale friends from the organization voluntarily donated underwear not only as a form of solidarity but also as a form of critique, because even now I still see patterns of violence continuing not only behind closed doors, in the domestic realm, but in public, carried out by government or military. So I used the underwear on the floor to show that the problem and violence against women is still very close to us. Sometimes we even see women's problems as below the surface and not important issues to be raised together globally in a common struggle. (Adii, in Dialogue 2023)

The intimate nature of Adii’s relationship to this struggle played out further in series of framed works:

There was also a painting in the middle that was surrounded by some paintings, pencil drawings and watercolours. Well, I actually made this work over a span of 3 years at the same time as collecting data on victims of violence. So, these drawing works are more personal and intimate for me. (Adii, in Dialogue 2023)

Constantinus Ruharusun’s installation of found objects and photographs from communities living in and around Pala plantations in Fakfak (Figure 3) bring into focus the systemic inequity bequeathed in the legacy of colonial plantation economies. He says:

I returned home to Fakfak in Papua, where they produce a lot of nutmeg trees, nutmeg which are sold, exported, and so on. In the past, the community’s process for harvesting the nutmeg was very respectful of the trees themselves … In the past, the nutmeg forest was usually interpreted as a sacred place in Fakfak. Well, many investors are now starting to enter, there are a lot of stupid policies being implemented just to raise the value of nutmeg again … 

Therefore, in my contribution to our work, especially in my space, I displayed some nutmeg [sculptures] in which a human head sleeps, or is hanged. There are also some materials that I brought from Fakfak, namely tomang. Tomang is a bag for harvesting nutmeg, nutmeg farmers’ clothes, and also some tools for the nutmeg harvesting process. (Ruharusun, in Dialogue 2023)

Ruharusun fears a future when the nutmeg farmers hang up their tomang for the last time, and the consequences this might bring to the communities involved.

Nelson Naktime’s gentle – yet often shocking – illuminated drawings installed in the shape of Gunung Nemangkawi (better known outside of Papua as Carstensz Pyramid, home to the Freeport Mine) (Figure 4) also examine the encroachment of resource capitalism on the cultures that have underpinned subsistence lifestyles and complex socio-cultural worldviews. Like Betty Adii and Constaninus Ruharusun, Naktime highlights the personal nature of his response to the Koreri Projection theme, and the violence underpinning the imagery:

.. it's one of the exhibits that I can say is very personal, because I was able to raise the kinds of incidences that have happened in my place, especially in Timika and Tembagapura where the mining company Freeport operates today. This is the same place that the Biak people used to call Koreri. Well, in our schools, we also refer to it as “Ayogon” or “heaven”, and which in our language was also referred to as Nemangkawi … So, we used to believe that when we died, we would join our ancestors until we would return to the snow mountain. But when the companies come, we see not only are they taking our wealth, but they're taking away our beliefs and all sorts of things. So, in my work I implemented the arrangement of several paintings in a triangular shape to respond to that, [depicting] where friends have been abused, where there have been incidents or violence, or picturing how Nemangkawi has been excavated and where there are particular belief systems and so on. (Naktime, in Dialogue 2023)

In one of Takndare’s contributions to Koreri Projection, portraits of deceased cultural leaders and activists are re-presented in photographic and semi-photographic ‘pop art’ interpretations (Figure 5). The objective of these works, says Takndare, is both to build an archive of portraits and to generate curiosity, conversation and recognition for those who have lost their lives to the Papuan struggle.

Figure 4. Nelson Natkime, Nemangkawi drawing installation, dimensions variable, 2021. The artwork's form represents Nemangkawi Ninggok (mountain), now also known as Carstensz Pyramid. According to Nelson, it was once a sacred site for peoples in Mimika; it is now the location of Freeport mines.

Figure 5. Ignasius Dicky Takndare, Koreri Projection: Freedom Souls, Retouching Images Series, 2021, Digital prints on paper.

The main idea is that in the narrative, ideological, war in Papua, these figures are placed as rebels who can be said to be enemies of the state. And young Papuans themselves don't know much about them. Not many know who the Black Brothers are, for example, or what the Mambesak movement is … . If we ask people my age, they know who Dipenogoro is, who Sudirman is. They don't know who Victor Kaisiepo, Arnold Clemens Ap, Edward Mofu are. So, I put them all in there, and only those who have already died … We try to bring those figures back to life. And hopefully everyone who enters [the space] will absorb the journey to Koreri. (Takndare, in Dialogue 2023)

Alongside the portraits a corrugated iron panel reminded viewers of the hoardings that keep the public away from building and project sites, with the word lawan (resist) scrawled across it. This, Takndare reveals, represents both the real-world incursions of ‘development’ on Papuan soil and the often unknown political struggle that Papuan’s face today. In order to maximise the work’s communicative power, Udeido invited a performance artist to simulate the journey to Koreri through the works, deliberately choosing an artist with no connection to the Papuan struggle. He says:

… [W]e want this work to be a meeting space and indeed, overall Udeido exists to build discussion and dialogue with people who do not really know Papua or see Papua in a way not as we see it. (Takndare, in Dialogue 2023)

Two more works represented the final stages of the journey towards the Koreri. Alongside the projected patterns of light composed by Michael Yan Devis and accompanied by a performance of traditional Papuan dances (Figure 7), stood an enormous figure constructed from a collection of signs and symbols of local and imported rituals and beliefs from across the archipelago and across the history of colonisation and capitalism (Figure 6). Takndare assembled the elements via suggestions from various sources and placed the work at the point in the journey where Udeido conceptualised a meeting between the physical and metaphysical worlds:

We interpreted Michael's area as the Koreri, meaning the non-physical world. The area where Betty, Nelson, and everyone’s works were placed were areas that we interpret as earthly experiences. Then there is one sign that bridges that, it's a medium that unites the physical and non-physical worlds and is like a gate or portal that connects us to the Koreri, and we locate that in the same space as Michael's work. (Takndare, in Dialogue 2023)

At first glance, it resembles the giant ritual body masks collected by missionaries and now stored in various institutions around the world (usually attributed to ethnic groups in the Papuan Gulf rather than Papuan ethnic groups). But on closer inspection, the clarity of cultural references dissolves; the installation’s collaborative design reveals a range of found objects, from woven bags, toy gun, a torso of female mannequin, printed textiles, betelnut and many more that appear to have personal and cultural significance to the members. It is an exemplar of contemporary postmodernism as much as anything else.

Figure 6. Ignasius Dicky Takndare and participants, A Little Gate to Koreri, 2021. Mixed media installation, dimensions variable. The work draws on the Papuan discourse, Memoria Passionis, which Chao (2020) notes is a “passionate remembrance” that “conveys Papuans' common history of suffering under Indonesian rule.”

Figure 7. Michael Yan Devis, Koreri, 2021. Installation, video mapping, mixed media, performing art, dimensions variable. This is the final work on the journey that the Koreri Projection laid out for audiences at Biennale Jogja and was the site of contemporary and traditional performances during the exhibition.

The Koreri itself was represented by a spectacle of light and motion. Yan Devis links his work explicitly to the hopes and expectations embedded in both the work of his fellow artists and the notion of tradition:

… it is as concise as that tradition is the alignment of attitudes that are inherited on a collective scale, perhaps within cultural communities or indigenous peoples or on a small scale, in families or between individuals … . And those attitudes, when they are inherited, will collide with social phenomena, as in Nelson's [Naktime] work. Their hopes for Nemangkawi; in Betty’s work, that women hope for safe spaces, and in Yanto’s work, the hope to free their area from military operations, and in Dicky’s work there are portraits where people have hoped for freedom itself. (Yan Devis, in Dialogue 2023)

The traditional dancers across whose bodies the light wove traditional patterns also expressed this hope, Takndare says. The dance depicted ‘a realm of freedom, where they felt they could express cultural and personal expression freely,’ the subversive words of their songs obscured by their regional language.

The collective’s appropriation of the visual manifestations of resource extraction, violence and dehumanisation, their fusing of folk tales from West Papua’s Biak region with imagery drawn from poster art to bark painting, and the kind of phallic appropriation familiar from the (Euro-American) feminist avant-garde of 1970s, subverts attempts to neatly categorise their work within the primitivist ideals of purity and simplicity, but also demands tthe inclusion of Papuan art in discourses of Indonesian art. In the early 90s, Guy Brett described the same paradigm playing out across colonial and ‘underdeveloped’ societies – albeit through a ‘western’ lens, which we might expand to include the neo-colonial practices of the Indonesian state and its usually counter-cultural contemporary art scene. Brett writes:

… .to deny the appropriation by indigenous peoples of forms from the west has itself been an integral part of the western projection of primitivism … Appropriation becomes a political and ethical issue because of its connections with the concrete, contemporary realities of power … [these] experimental forms show, in a great variety, artists’ practice as a form of cultural activism … (Brett 1991, 135)

Udeido draws their cultural activism from an earlier generation of Papuan cultural figures. Figures such as Arnold Ap (1945–1984) and Eddie Mofu (unknown–1984) are revered for their contributions to establishing the foundations of a united Papuan cultural identity. Mofu and Ap achieved this through the popular music of their band Mambesak, as well as Ap’s role as curator of the ethnographic museum in Cenderawasih University. In her analysis of the significance of Mambesak’s role in manifesting a sense of shared identity amongst Papua’s disparate ethnic and language groups, Diana Glazebrook (2008) noted that ‘Ap made a conscious decision to engage Papuan people in the preservation of their cultural identity, in spite of their existence within the Indonesian nation-state.’⁹

Udeido’s goals are similar, but complicated by further generations of trauma, and specifically targeted at the conspicuous absence of these figures in Indonesian art’s prominent focus on reckoning with the nation’s violent past. Insisting that Ap – who was arrested, tortured and eventually murdered in 1984, as was Mofu – should be recognised as a pioneering curator, Takndare’s work points to the hypocrisy of a state that has violently annexed a people into its citizenry whilst simultaneously denying their place in national discourse. In October 2022, at the Biennale Jogja’s sister event, the Equator Symposium, Takndare delivered a stunning rebuke to the marginalising tendency of Indonesian culture and politics, and its tragic real-life consequences. ‘Arnold Ap was not killed because he took up arms … ’ he said. ‘He was killed because of his curatorial practice’.¹⁰

Arnold Ap’s story may be little-known in Indonesia, but the power of his work and the significance of the circumstances of his death have long had resonance for those seeking to understand how control is asserted over colonised people. In Imagined Communities (1991), Benedict Anderson also uses Ap’s story as an example of the power of the museum to the colonial project and ‘a distant Jakarta(‘s)’ inheritance of political manoeuvres from its own former colonisers. He establishes the circumstances of Ap’s murder almost as bluntly as Takndare, writing: ‘The link between Ap’s occupation and assassination is not at all accidental’ (Anderson 1991, 178).

Takndare laid out a series of recommendations, demanding that discourse and curriculum dealing with curatorial practice in Indonesia attend to the stories of those cultural workers – like Ap and Mofu – whose contributions have been ‘ignored by the hegemonic and centralised histories of art and curatorship which have tainted art in Indonesia, Asia and the Pacific’ (Takndare 2022b). The striking rebuke is even more barbed if considered in cognisance of one of Indonesian arts’ ‘key moments,’ when in 1981 the uncompromising young artist Semsar Siahaan burned a sculpture created by his lecturer, Sunaryo, which appropriated traditional Papuan imagery (discussed further in Isabella, this volume). Siahaan’s post-performance essay, titled Souvenirs from the Village II, drew attention to the role of art in perpetuating the annexation and consumption of traditional cultures in Indonesia’s quest for national unity.¹¹

Udeido’s Koreri Projection straddles these issues of power and activism with ambiguity, simultaneously claiming a place for Papuan art within Indonesian art history and challenging the state’s territorial claims. Embracing ancestral mythologies and invoking their own lineage of activism with Mambesak’s aspirations to form contemporary Papuan identity, their work points to the intractably complex legacies that colonisation and extractivism impose and offers no easy solutions.

As art historian and curator, Patrick Flores notes, the concept of timeliness is central to the writing of Southeast Asian art history. A timely art history is an art historical writing which is sensitive to ‘omissions, absence, misrepresentation, orientalism, denigration and outright negation’ (Flores 2017, 14). In the process of writing the article, we are also engaging with timeliness’ counterpoint, the untimely, which anticipates the moment when art historical writing can lift itself and move beyond the essential critique. We can reflect back to the past when in 1946 renowned Indonesian modernist painter Sudjojono positioned the future of Indonesian art in precisely this way:

Since the Dutch colonial era, in the era of PERSAGI [Persatuan Ahli Gambar Indonesia, the Indonesian Picture-makers’ Association], we already know where we will be taking our Indonesian art … We will accomplish our revolution not only through the intellect but also through artistic means. (trans. Isabella 2017, 163)

For Udeido, their revolution is one that is invested in the projections of hope for a more inclusive discourse. At the conclusion of our conversation, Takndare recounted some of the group’s preparatory discussions:

… maybe we discussed a lot about the Koreri Projection, but last night there were some things that we also discussed about discourse. Not just primitivism, but discourse. The scheme of Indonesian art, how we see it. And that I think we also want to convey that. The way we see Indonesian or world art. (Takndare, in Dialogue 2023)

Through their strategic approach to their rapidly growing presence on both the national and international stage, Udeido confirms that they too know where they are taking their version of Papuan art and identity.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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Notes on contributors

Elly Kent

Elly Kent is a Lecturer in the School of Culture, History and Language, College of Asia & the Pacific at the Australian National University. Her recent publications include Artists and the People: Ideologies of Art in Indonesia (NUS Press, 2022), which has recently been republished in Indonesian, and the co–edited book Living Art: Indonesian Artists Engage Politics, Society and History (ANU Press, 2022).

Wulan Dirgantoro

Wulan Dirgantoro is a Lecturer in Contemporary Art at the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. Her publications include Feminisms and Indonesian Contemporary Art: Defining Experiences (Amsterdam University Press, 2017) and ‘After 1965: Historical Violence and Strategies of Representation in Indonesian Visual Arts’ in Living Art: Indonesian Artists Engage Politics, Society and History (ANU Press, 2022).

Notes

1 Since 2022, the former Indonesian province of West Papua (named in 2007) has been divided into smaller provinces and is now administratively designated as Papua Barat (West Papua), Papua Pegunungan (Highland Papua), Papua Barat Daya (Southwest Papua, located on the Northwest border with Papua New Guinea), Papua Tengah (Central Papua) and Papua. Historically it has also been referred to as Dutch New Guinea/Nugini Belanda (1895–1962), West New Guinea/Nugini Barat or West Irian/Irian Barat (1962–1973), Irian Jaya (1973–2002), and Papua (2002–present). There are political resonances, too complex to address here, embedded in the use of different nomenclature. Following Udeido’s usage in conversation, this paper uses Papua unless referring to West Papua province.

2 Commentary from members of Udeido is drawn from a group discussion held via Zoom, on 6 June 2023. Present at that discussion were Elly Kent, Wulan Dirgantoro, Dicky Takndare, Nelson Natkime, Yanto Gombo, Andre Takimai, Betty Adii, Constantinus Ruharusun, and Michael Yan Devis.

3 The variations on theme, content and material observable in this field are immense. For hundreds of examples of contemporary artworks utilising the themes, forms and materials appropriated by European modernists see QAGOMA’s collection of Pacific art. https://collection.qagoma.qld.gov.au/objects-by-pacific-artdepartment?_gl=1%2A1elz41p%2A_ga%2ANDMyNjEyNTYwLjE2ODgwODM3MDA.%2A_ga_309HXHSGK8%2AMTY4ODA4MzcwMC4xLjEuMTY4ODA4Mzc1NC4wLjAuMA..&page=14. Many artists are maintaining and adapting traditions that were disrupted by colonisation, while others are re-appropriating traditions into contemporary forms with political overtones.

4 ‘Narasi lama yang memandang ekspresi budaya orang Papua sebagai ancaman tampaknya telah menjadi luka yang kronis di tubuh bangsa Indonesia, sesuatu yang diwariskan turun menurun dari penindas kepada penindas baru. Penting dalam titik ini untuk membangun antitesis dari produk warisan itu, gerakan organik yang bersifat translokal dapat berperan sangat krusial untuk membangung upaya "melawan warisan dengan warisan."

5 These materials can largely be found in the colonial archives in the Netherlands. See for example a record of the Dutch Scientific Expeditions to South New Guinea (1907–1913) (in Ballard, Fink, and Ploeg 2001).

6 PERSAGI refers to Persatuan Ahli Gambar Indonesia, the Indonesian Picture-makers' Association.

7 Curiously, Sunaryo also referred to ‘Aborijin’ as one of his interests in seni primitif. This could be referencing Indigenous Australian art, especially dot paintings from Central Australia. Sunaryo stated that knowing that ‘seni Aborijin’ [Aboriginal art] is not Indonesian, he reproduced the aesthetic elements under the ‘Irian’ label [see Sunaryo (2017) and Galikano (2017)].

8 A similar reassessment has been explored in an earlier exhibition titled Reframing Modernism, co-organised by The National Gallery of Singapore and Centre Pompidou in 2016. Horikawa Lisa, curator in The National Gallery Singapore, puts forward the term ‘Nativist Impulse’ to discuss how artists such as Galo B. Ocampo and Natalia S. Goncharova harnessed local particularities ‘to intervene in the construction of modernity’ [(Horikawa 2016, 65–70; see also Nelson (2024)].

9 Mambesak was formed in 1978 and performed songs in over 30 local languages. Glazebrook (2008, 31–49) writes: ‘The bounded nature of the repertoire imagined a certain cultural congruity – an overarching cultural West Papuanness.’

10 See https://www.instagram.com/p/CmAvupssvRu/?hl=en. In his essay for the publication associated with this event, Dicky points at that the extent to which the Indonesian authorities see cultural expression as an existential threat was established in the days immediately after the UNTEA when Indonesian authorities burned books, journals and research on Papuan culture in front of the Parliament building, an incident known as the Neraka Budaya Papua, or The Hell of Papuan Culture.

11 As we show here (also see Isabella, this volume), Indonesian artists and writers have not been immune to the primitivist impulse (Yuliman [1968] 2020; Sumardjo [1950] 2006). Seni primitif (primitive art, sometimes referred to as ‘ethnic art’) also retains a strong presence in the Indonesian imagination and in global art markets (Costa 2019), an issue which we do not address at length.