Collecting Entanglements and Embodied Histories

The two exhibitions in Berlin and Jakarta question nation building and untold histories, and are part of Collecting Entanglements and Embodied Histories, an international collaboration between five institutions, initiated by the Goethe-Institut.

Nation, Narration, Narcosis
This exhibition addresses the relationship between art and political protest, historical trauma, and social narratives from the 19th century to now.

The works on display in Nation, Narration, Narcosis at Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin explore the effects of nation-building, colonialism or the Anthropocene on societies, their narratives, as well as the ecology of our planet. Departing from Beuys’s concept of social sculpture, the exhibition confronts the notion of nation contained in the name “Nationalgalerie” with alternative concepts of connectivity, solidarity, and individuality. Nation, Narration, Narcosis brings artworks and documents from the collection of the Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin into dialogue with loans from Galeri Nasional Indonesia, MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum, and Singapore Art Museum among others. Shown are works from over 50 artists like Amanda Heng, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Arahmaiani, Ho Tzu Nyen, Käthe Kollwitz, Kawita Vatanajyankur, Marina Abramović, Melati Suryodarmo, Tita Salina, Willem de Rooij and others. 

Nation, Narration, Narcosis contrasts a homogeneous understanding of nationhood, which presumes a singular narrative that gives meaning to a community, with a polyphony of (hi)stories, counter-stories, and absent stories that seeks new narratives. The title of the exhibition cites the letter “N” from the artist Ho Tzu Nyen’s ongoing project The Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia (since 2012), which addresses the numerous cultural currents of multi-layered identities, nations, and histories in the Southeast Asian region and, beyond that, the reality-changing and reality-displacing power of narratives. The exhibition is a continuation of the research and exhibition project Hello World. Revision of a Collection (Hamburger Bahnhof, 2018), which was funded by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes as part of the programme “Museum Global”. The project sustainably strengthens the curatorial exchange and continues the critical examination of the narratives in the collections. The exhibition is curated by Anna-Catharina Gebbers with Grace Samboh, Gridthiya Gaweewong and June Yap, together with assistant curator Charlotte Knaup and Goethe-Institut Fellow Rosalia Namsai Engchuan. The exhibition is generously funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation. 

Para Sekutu yang Tidak Bisa Berkata Tidak (The Acquiescent Allies)
Departing from the 1995 Non-Aligned Countries Contemporary Art Exhibition that carved a chapter in the collection of the Galeri Nasional Indonesia, this exhibition investigates relationships amongst artists, their practices and their allegiances.

Two international exhibitions become a starting point of this exhibition; the first being Paris-Jakarta 1950-1960, a collection-based show initiated and co-organized by artist Siti Adiyati Subangun (1992) and the second Contemporary Art from Non-Aligned Countries (1995), following the Non-Aligned Summit in Jakarta in 1992. Amid the global scope of the historical exhibition, Para Sekutu yang Tidak Bisa Berkata Tidak focuses more on everyday social exchanges. Familiar interactions including sharing meals and family bonds are seen through works from the collection of Galeri Nasional Indonesia, Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin, MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum, and Singapore Art Museum, as well as other selected institutional and private collections.

The reflection on “national gallery“ present within the conception of Nation, Narration, Narcosis is shared by Para Sekutu yang Tidak Bisa Berkata Tidak (The Acquiescent Allies), whose title is inspired by a work which has been reproduced for the exhibition, Paduan Suara yang Tidak Bisa Berkata Tidak (literally: the choir that cannot say no, or, in other words, The Acquiescent Choir, 1997) by S. Teddy D. Prior to this exhibition, the installation was only exhibited once in the year of its making so as with many works within the exhibition. Para Sekutu yang Tidak Bisa Berkata Tidak is an effort to exhibit Galeri Nasional Indonesia’s collection that has almost never gone out of its storage, including a number of works by female artists from mid-1900s. The exhibition is curated by Grace Samboh, with Anna-Catharina Gebbers, Gridthiya Gaweewong and June Yap. Charlotte Knaup is assistant curator and Rosalia Namsai Engchuan is Goethe-Institut Fellow at Hamburger Bahnhof. 

Both exhibitions are two out of four distinctive exhibitions within a long-term project Collecting Entanglements and Embodied Histories, in collaboration with Galeri Nasional Indonesia, Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin, MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum, and Singapore Art Museum and initiated by the Goethe-Institut. The exhibition ERRATA at MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum, Chiang Mai, is open until February 14, 2022. Singapore Art Museum’s exhibition, The Gift, completes its run on November 7, 2021, but is available digitally even after through its website thegift.singaporeartmuseum.sg.

The project also manifests into eight commissioned video essays, released between October 2021 and February 2022. The essays highlight eight artists and their practice, as told by art practitioners. Some of the art practitioners involved in this series are Mark Teh, Melati Suryodarmo, and Wantanee Siripattananuntakul. The first episode of the series sees a cinematic storytelling by Thai artist Wantanee Siripattananuntakul on Joseph Beuys. Besides showing snippets of Beuys’s work, Wantanee profiles her African grey parrot, named Beuys after the artist, replicating parts of Joseph Beuys’s quotes. The series is available for viewing on Goethe-Institut Indonesien’s Youtube channel. Wantanee’s video essay is inspired by her Beuys (African grey parrot) Art Project (2013–present), part of which is on display at the exhibition ERRATA at MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum.