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Indonesia Council Open Conference 2025
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**WITHDRAWN** Ruwatan Tanah Air Beta: Moving between the WereldMuseum and the Bandung Art Space Selasar Sunaryo

Organised Panel

Organised Panel

2:30 pm

09 July 2025

Forum 3 (Melbourne Connect)

Session 5: Decolonial Museum Interventions in the Netherlands and Indonesia

One Conference streams

History

Submission Description

Note: This paper author has withdrawn from ICOC 2025
This paper discusses the genesis of my art work Ruwatan Tanah Air Beta which was inspired by a Sundanese ritual, at the Bogor Botanical Garden intended to cleanse bad omens and restore balance between the spiritual and physical worlds. The art work constituted a meditation on decolonization, reflecting on the diverse and conflicting meanings of objects in the garden across different historical and cultural contexts that suggest a profound intersection of colonial and indigenous histories. The work was first created for a critical exhibition on botanical gardens by the Farmer Framed (the Netherlands). Then it was purchased as a form of museum intervention by the Werdeldmuseum in Amsterdam, an institution with a colonial legacy. Following this I created a work of art that reflected on this process which I exhibited at the Bandung Art Space, Selasar Sunaryo. This paper analyses how different forms of display of art affect its purposes.

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