Commissioned by Audemars Piguet Contemporary, presented at Museum MACAN
By Nadya Wang, with Sharrona Valezka

Natasha Tontey (b. Indonesia, 1989), 'Primate Visions: Macaque Macabre', Museum MACAN, Jakarta, 16.11. 2024–6.04.2025. Commissioned by Audemars Piguet Contemporary. Image courtesy of the artist and Audemars Piguet. — Natasha Tontey (b. Indonesia, 1989), 'Primate Visions: Macaque Macabre', Museum MACAN, Jakarta, 16.11.2024–6.04.2025. Commissioned by Audemars Piguet Contemporary. Image courtesy of the artist and Audemars Piguet.

‘Primate Visions: Macaque Macabre’ by Natasha Tontey will open tomorrow, 16 November 2024, at Museum MACAN (Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara) in Jakarta, Indonesia. Commissioned by Audemars Piguet Contemporary, in-house curator Denis Pernet worked together with the museum and the artist to present her first solo institutional exhibition. This is the 13th year of Audemars Piguet Contemporary, which has presented the works of over 20 international artists, including artists from Asia such as Cao Fei and Sun Xun.

Natasha Tontey (b. Indonesia, 1989) and Denis Pernet, 'Primate Visions: Macaque Macabre', Museum MACAN, Jakarta, 16.11.2024–6.04.2025. Commissioned by Audemars Piguet Contemporary. Image courtesy of the artist and Audemars Piguet.

The exhibition title comes from feminist theorist Donna Haraway’s work Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science (1989). It poked at scientists’ perception of the sexual nature of female primates, and deconstructed models of the family in primate research. Haraway's discussions of how scientists have perceived the sexual nature of female primates opens a new chapter in feminist theory, raising unsettling queries into models of the family and of heterosexuality in primate research. Through the exhibition, Tontey similarly challenges received ideas about evolutionary history that have shaped our (human) understanding of the world.

‘Primate Visions: Macaque Macabre’ explores the fate of the Celebes crested macaque at the hands of human beings. The monkey is traditionally eaten by the Minahasan people, who know it as yaki. Tontey recalls that she first encountered the yaki when she visited a market in her hometown with her father and saw its skull. Before the harvest season, some members of the Minahasan community would also dress up in the likeness of yakis, which they consider pests, to deter them from damaging crops in a ritual called Mawolay.

However, the yaki is a critically endangered species, one of 25 in the world, with wild populations declining by 80 to 90 percent in the past 40 years due to humans plying the bushmeat trade and encroaching upon their habitat. Tontey approaches the complicated relationship between Minahasans and yakis with curiosity rather than judgement. Essentially, Tontey extrapolates from the tension, posing an oft-asked question—can’t we all get along?

Tontey’s practice explores fictional accounts of–and in–history, particularly stories that manufacture fear. The exhibition further develops this trajectory. It is one that is rich and complex, shaped in equal parts by rigorous research and fantastical imagination. At the press conference, Tontey declared: “I like the idea of the grotesque, but it has to be gorgeous”. The word “immersive” is often used to describe installation works. In this case, it is particularly apt, for we are immediately, and completely immersed in Tontey’s world, created in her unique visual language, informed by her training in graphic design.

“I like the idea of the grotesque, but it has to be gorgeous.”

At the heart of the large-scale installation is a single-channel film that runs for a lengthy 31 minutes and 30 seconds, and it is gripping from start to finish. The plot of the film goes like this: Imago Organella, played beautifully by Ng Astinorya Etheldreda, is a primatologist who frees two yakis from their cage. Together with companions Xenomorphia and Madame Chauffeur, the motley crew embarks on an adventure, eating an elixir jelly at a diner, visiting a biological research facility, then a cave, and finally arriving in Minahasa after a plane ride. As they travel together, they muse about the differences, as well as the similarities between the yakis–and more generally primates–and modern-day human beings.

The film is an accomplished pastiche of the media that Tontey consumed growing up in Indonesia in the 1990s. She cites television series such as Tuyul dan Mbak Yul and Jin dan Jun, as well as local pop culture icons like Si Unyil, a puppet character from the namesake TV series, and Queen of Indonesian horror Suzzanna, who starred in cult classic films such as Sundelbolong (1981). Tontey further layers the film with references to spaghetti Westerns, which she discovered to be popular among an older generation of Minahasan men in her ongoing field research.

Behind the scenes of ‘Primate Visions: Macaque Macabre’, by Natasha Tontey commissioned by Audemars Piguet Contemporary. Image courtesy of the artist and Audemars Piguet.

Images in Tontey’s film are deliciously distorted; they are pulled, stretched, doubled, blurred and overlaid, taken up close and far away, straight on, from the ground and from above. The dialogue is equally off-kilter, dubbed, ever so slightly– and deliberately– mismatched over moving lips, in a mix of languages, mainly English with a sprinkling of Tontemboan, a Minahasan language, Indonesian and Japanese. The script is full of subtitled, lyrical declarations: “In the depths of our existence, cells dance and spin, shedding their old forms to make way for the new… It is the choreography of life itself, a choreography that transcends species.” At times, they rhyme, establishing a catchy beat to slogan-like lines. The sound effects are recorded, mixed and mastered by long-time collaborator Wahono of DIVISI62, a sound and visual arts label.

The main characters are female and strong, a thread in Tontey’s oeuvre, as she explores her ancestral Minahasan culture. For Singapore Biennale 2022, Tontey presented ‘Amidst the Flame; Lacuna for Compassion’, a multimedia installation, for which she also collaborated with Wahono to bring to life. It explored the Karai, a hyper-masculine ritual ceremony of the Minahasan people, which she reimagined to be based on care and vulnerability. ‘Primate Visions: Macaque Macabre’ continues the work; Tontey brings women–and traits typically associated with the feminine–front and centre.

The storyline in ‘Primate Visions: Macaque Macabre’ recalls the argument in the book The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis by Barbara Creed, which rejects the trope of the woman as the victim in horror films. In Tontey’s campy, trippy film, they are the ones in charge. In Xenomorphia’s name, “xeno”, meaning foreign, or different, is a nod to xenofeminism, which pushes for technology as a way to break down gender roles. And “morphia” speaks to her transformation into her being, with both human and yaki characteristics, represented by her tail made of bones and a yaki skull. It is a way to consider our inherent similarities to other species, a key topic of discussion among the characters in the film, which may yet exceed the differences.

The attention that Tontey has paid to detail is extraordinary, particularly with the costumes for each and every character. Yaki 1 and Yaki 2, like Xenomorphia, have cut-and-paste yaki and human elements in their costumes. Yaki 2 is covered in lustrous black yaki hair, juxtaposed with the chest and pectoral muscles, which are literally, visually defined as the dialpad of a mobile phone, complete with the asterisk and hash symbols. The tail, a hand gripping a dumbbell, is equally absurdist. These symbols of communication and exercise inject humour, while prompting the visitor to think about the trappings of contemporary human life.

What makes the exhibition sing is the display of the film set, which extends the experience of the film, and emphasises Tontey’s commitment to detail, and her penchant for playfulness. Across the exhibition space are costumes, scenery and furniture. For example, ‘Set number 3 - Cellular Being’ features an interactive, free-form sculpture with a built-in endoscopy camera. Visitors can stand in front of it and see moving images of parts of themselves transmitted to multiple screens. This makes a point about how we might take a closer look at ourselves, like the yakis are studied in the primatologist lab within the film. There are also standalone furniture pieces, such as ‘Set number 2 – Sylvester’, a small, anthropomorphised chair, with a face on its round back, its eyes bulbous, staring back at the viewer, its mouth agape, two-clawed feet extending from the chair’s legs firmly planted on the ground. And on the other side of the gallery sits ‘Set number 7 - Yaki Armchair’, a black throne with a cheeky tongue sticking out from under the cushioned seat, with a hand for a crown.

A second video titled ‘Epilogue: Conversation with the Veteran of Battalion Jin Kasuang’ is a fictionalised interview between the yaki characters and Rens Sarapung, who had served in Battalion Jin Kasuang for Permesta, a rebel movement that began in East Indonesia in 1957, which pushed for regional autonomy and decentralisation, and ended in 1961. As Sarapung recounts his memories and the yakis listen, we can feel the beginnings of empathy building among them. The video thus echoes the longer film in its message: that we can get along if we spend time together, and listen to what we have to say about our individual lived experiences. In doing so, we can understand what we have in common, and there could be so much.

All in all, ‘Primate Visions: Macaque Macabre’ is a conceptually and visually bold protest against unquestioned acceptance of received ideas. Tontey succeeds in bringing her vision—or in this case (primate) visions to life, mirroring contemporary issues relating to human impact on nature, sustainability of practices, and the negotiation of individual and collective identities. It is a timely call to action to create our own speculative fictions, in order to live our own truths.

‘Primate Visions: Macaque Macabre’ is on view at Museum MACAN from 16 November 2024 to 6 April 2025. More information here.

There will be a talk “Primate Visions: Macaque Macabre – A Conversation: Envisioning Indigenous Practice in Contemporary Perspective” on 16 November, hosted by Nin Djani, Curator of Education and Public Programmes, Museum MACAN. The panel features Natasha Tontey, Denni H.R. Pinontoan, Director of PUKKAT – Pusat Kajian Kebudayaan Indonesia Timur (Center of East Indonesia Cultural Studies), and Ady Kristanto, Animal Welfare Manager, Animalium, a research facility under BRIN – The National Research and Innovation Bureau. Tickets can be purchased here.

For more on Natasha Tontey on Art & Market, read A Day in the Life: Natasha Tontey.

This article is presented in partnership with Audemars Piguet.