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13 November 2024
Artist Natasha Tontey presents Primate Visions: Macaque Macabre – a new large-scale, immersive exhibition that runs from 16 November 2024 until 6 April 2025 at Museum MACAN (Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara), Jakarta, Indonesia.
As the largest solo exhibition to date for Tontey, this multimedia work explores the relationship between the native population of black-crested macaques, or yaki, and the indigenous people of South Minahasa. The artwork is commissioned by Audemars Piguet Contemporary and marks the programme’s first commission in Indonesia.
With Primate Visions: Macaque Macabre, Tontey presents a fictional environment, brought to life by film and installation. Drawing from her own ancestral heritage and her ongoing engagement in ritual practices, Tontey looks to her interrogation of social norms in her native Minahasa – in this case, with the local population of macaques. The black-crested macaque, known as yaki in Minahasan, is simultaneously viewed as part of the social structure of everyday life by the indigenous community and as vermin, known for invading villages and stealing crops.
This relationship is further complicated by the recognition of the yaki as an endangered species by international organisations, who encourage their preservation. The artist’s work seeks to reveal the biases and connections that humans share with their animal counterparts, envisioning a world where a deeper understanding between species is possible.
Rooted in the theoretical texts of writers including Donna Haraway, Tontey’s research uses a playful mode of storytelling to dissect the complex interaction between the yaki and the Minahasan people. Her single-channel film, at the centre of Primate Visions: Macaque Macabre, follows a pair of primatologists who liberate a troop of yaki held captive in a forest. The protagonists engage in dialogue and experiments, while imagining a future relationship between these two species. Through a reinterpretation of Mawolay, a Minahasan ritual in which locals wear monkey-like costumes to deter the yaki from raiding their villages, Tontey invites audiences to enter a fictional reality that encourages empathy, understanding, and patience between beings.
"Primate Visions: Macaque Macabre" seeks to unearth and examine the complex, often contradictory, relationship between humans and the yaki, the black crested macaque of Minahasa. Through speculative fiction, I try to navigate the intertwined dynamics of primatology, ecofeminism, and technology. The narratology and immersive experience highlight the intricate bond, the messy relationship between humans and the yaki, reflecting the tangled interactions between species and encouraging audiences to consider their own relationships with the non-human world. "Primate Visions: Macaque Macabre" is a world both playful and macabre, filled with radical oddities!
Natasha Tontey
Artist
The artist’s film is presented alongside installation comprised of original parts of the film’s set, such as costumes and pieces of scenery to draw the audience deeper into the film’s narrative while engaging with these objects in their fantastical environment. Informed by the formal qualities of B movies, horror and theatrical production methods, this exhibition places her work in a long tradition of Indonesian filmmaking that uses creative energy to drive production.
This exhibition is the first collaboration between Tontey and Audemars Piguet Contemporary and enables the artist to further develop her research and artistic practice at a larger scale. Commissioned by Audemars Piguet Contemporary, Primate Visions: Macaque Macabre is curated by the programme’s in-house curator, Denis Pernet, working closely with Tontey and Museum MACAN to develop and realise the project.
Primate Visions: Macaque Macabre will be on view at Museum MACAN in Jakarta, Indonesia from 16 November 2024 until 6 April 2025
Address
AKR Tower Level M, Jl. Panjang No.5, Kb. Jeruk, Kec. Kb. Jeruk, Kota Jakarta Barat, Daerah Khusus Ibukota Jakarta 11530, Indonesia
With "Primate Visions: Macaque Macabre", Natasha Tontey has created a vibrant, multisensory environment that invites viewers on a transformative journey into Tontey’s fictional world. This exhibition reveals the unexpected similarities between humans and other species and envisions a more collaborative future, reflecting Audemars Piguet’s belief in the power of creativity to connect people. We are proud to have supported the artist in the commissioning of this work, her largest and most complex to date, working closely with the team at Museum MACAN to realise this project in Jakarta.
Denis Pernet
Curator, Audemars Piguet Contemporary
Natasha Tontey is a Minahasan artist based in between Jakarta and Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
Her recent exhibitions include a solo show at Auto Italia, London (2022); Selected group shows and screening at Museum MACAN, Jakarta, Seoul Mediacity Biennale, Seoul (2023), 34th Singapore International Film Festival, 58th and 57th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (2023, 2024), Singapore Biennale (2022); Stroom Den Haag (2022); GHOST; 2565, Bangkok (2022); Protozone8 Queer Trust, Zürich (2022); Arko Art Council, Seoul (2022), Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul (2022); Hamburger Bahnhof, Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (2021); transmediale, Berlin (2021); Performance Space 2021, Sydney; Other Futures, Amsterdam (2021); Singapore International Film Festival (2021), Kyoto Experiment 2021; Asian Film Archive, Singapore (2021). In 2020, she received the HASH Award from the ZKM, Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe and Akademie Schloss-Solitude. She was a fellow for Human Machine of the Junge Akademie at Akademie der Künste Berlin 2021–2023. – tontey.org