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- Wulia, Tintin, 1972
(författare)
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Context—after Kawara's Title, 1965
- 2024
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Ingår i: Jakarta, Baik Art, 10 Jan - 24 Feb 2024.
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Konstnärligt arbete (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Context - after Kawara's Title, 1965 is the second in a series where I develop on one of On Kawara's earliest surviving conceptual works, Title (1965), which decisively marked his entrance to conceptual art, leaving his figurative period behind. Kawara's earlier works depict gory scenes profoundly affected by the US bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Like Kawara, I am deeply – although distantly – affected by US violence. Contrary to the sudden impactful bombings in Kawara’s case, the violence I experienced was slow, far-reaching, and long-lasting, crossing generations since 1965. This is why my first experience of Title (On Kawara, 1965) was so unsettling: Kawara must have known, I thought, that 1965 was not "ONE THING" (Wulia 2019, p.10). In Subtext - after Kawara's Title, 1965 (2019), the first work of this series, I exploded the three canvases of Title into 65 canvases of various sizes through rigorous research into the techniques and material that Kawara applied into this work as part of the BAIK ART Residency at Davidson College and a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship in Washington DC. I also investigated the subdued themes in Kawara's Title, including a text he arguably self-censored, "RED CHINA" (Woo, 2010). Context results from a further investigation in my Swedish Research Council-funded research project, Protocols of Killings: 1965, distance, and the ethics of future warfare (2021-23), bringing in the context of the 30,000-page declassified archives of Jakarta US Embassy, 1964-68, surrounding the Indonesian mass killings of 1965-66. In Context - after Kawara's Title, 1965, I expand on my recent finding, namely the pattern of Withdrawal Notices I found across these 30,000-page archives. My analysis on the withdrawal of these 798 documents from the declassified archives shows the highest density around 1 October 1965, the date of the first killings that became the trigger event. This suggests that these withdrawn documents are the crème-de-la-crème of US's secrets surrounding the Indonesian 1965-66 mass killings. Context - after Kawara's Title, 1965 is an installation of 65 paintings of dates picked by diverse individuals, chosen from a list of dates corresponding to the withdrawn documents, hence linking two events: a personal memory, and a reality withheld for the sake of state-sanctioned history.
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| 2. |
- Wulia, Tintin, 1972
(författare)
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Liminal Death: Assemblage
- 2024
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Ingår i: Jakarta, Baik Art, 10 Jan - 24 Feb 2024.
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Konstnärligt arbete (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In Liminal Death: Assemblage, I reflect on liminal death and its connection to fragmented narratives, which act as the building blocks of certain memories. What I call “Liminal death” are deaths that happen during metamorphosis, right at the critical moment when a mosquito larvae emerge from their exoskeleton. They are moving across the border between two completely different habitats: water and air. This is such a fascinating process. It was almost like seeing the birth of a human baby except for a big difference: the mosquito is much more active in this process compared to a human baby. They sort of step out of their larval exoskeleton and this needs to happen very quickly, because otherwise they risk drowning. So not all of them would make it, of course. Some, like you can see in this specimen, would emerge head and wings first, but would never step out of their larval shell before it’s too late. So death here is a death in process, frozen in time, preserved in ethanol. This makes me think of my grandfather’s death. My grandfather was disappeared in 1965 in Indonesia, and was never returned. So his death was underway and unfinished: his body was never found, so, in fear, my family preserved their hope - and was suspended by this hope – that he was still alive. We are aware that there is no hope that he was still alive, but in the sake of keeping hope in a sea of fear and hopelessness, we decided not to know, to preserve our hope. Talking about preservation: ethanol preserves specimens quite well, but may alter the specimens’ original appearance. Over time, ethanol can also evaporate, affecting the preservation of the specimens. This is another way to say that time heals: it does something to memory. Healing can be thought of as a sort of modification to one’s memory, reimagined in its relation to emotion. But still, my grandfather never really died. He has a liminal death.
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| 3. |
- Wulia, Tintin, 1972
(författare)
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Memory is Frail (and Truth Brittle) – performance lecture
- 2024
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Ingår i: Jakarta, MACAN Museum, 13 Jan 2024.
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Konstnärligt arbete (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This performance lecture is based on an eponymous installation of 115 charcoal and graphite drawings the artist made in 2019, which was based on a text published in 2018. It questions the nature of reality and the building block of human knowledge, which is perceived mainly through humankind’s limited senses, the main part of which is the eye. At an allegorical level, it interrogates how our understanding of the world is largely constructed visually and recorded through memory, and how these are also prone to manipulation, for example in state propaganda and isolated versions of state-sanctioned history. --- Art does not merely articulate an artist’s personal expression but is often inseparable from a larger historical, political, and geographical context. To kick off the 2024 Museum MACAN public programs, artist/researcher Tintin Wulia presents a performance lecture and discussion session, Memory is Frail (and Truth Brittle). Exhibited as 115 illustrations drawn with charcoal and graphite, Memory is Frail (and Truth Brittle) presents a connection between major world events scattered across different times and places, and how these events are recollected by humans. As the subject navigates through ideas surrounding reality, frailty of memory, and human geography and history, Wulia interrogates what we believe to be reality is constructed largely from our sensory perception, state-sanctioned histories, and fragile memories of humans.
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| 4. |
- Wulia, Tintin, 1972
(författare)
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Some Memory Unfurls
- 2024
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Ingår i: Jakarta, Baik Art, 10 Jan - 24 Feb 2024.
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Konstnärligt arbete (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Some Memory Unfurls is a part of a series of work that contemplates the fragmented reality of inherited memory material contemplation of the fragmented reality of inherited (traumatic) memory that are transferred intergenerationally in marginalised/migrating communities. In my family, stories are inherited intergenerationally, but these stories can only be inherited in fragments, never fully (see also Wulia, 2008).
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| 5. |
- Wulia, Tintin, 1972, et al.
(författare)
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Tintin Wulia: Disclosures
- 2024
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Ingår i: Jakarta, Baik Art, 10 Jan - 24 Feb 2024.
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Konstnärligt arbete (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- “Tintin’s recent projects offers essential context, illuminating the interconnectedness between national happenings and the influence and complicity of external forces. They reveal how these forces have molded Indonesia’s modern history’s socio-political contours. In this way, her work establishes a dialogue between the personal and political, between hidden histories and communal memory, and between the banality of everyday life and the extraordinary events that shape it. This preoccupation can be seen across all of the works within this exhibition.” (Aaron Seeto, December 2023) BAIK ART Jakarta is pleased to present Tintin Wulia: Disclosures. Tintin Wulia is an Indonesian Australian artist whose work reflects on globalisation and geopolitics and uses personal stories to unpick and lay them bare. For over 20 years she has researched the histories that have been told by the world’s dominant narrators, scrutinising their blind spots and systemic inequities and retelling them from nonconforming perspectives. Tintin’s recounting brings the past powerfully into the present and centres it on the voices of the periphery. Her works decode, reinterpret and represent history, orienting us to the current global situation in an effort to help collectively navigate towards a more socially just future. Tintin Wulia: Disclosures is presented in parallel with Tintin Wulia: Secrets at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne. It is prepared in conjunction with Tintin’s artistic research project at the University of Gothenburg entitled Protocols of Killings: 1965, distance, and the ethics of future warfare, funded by the Swedish Research Council (2020-02828), and is co-supported by various institutions and collaborators.
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