The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT10) Catalogue

Artists The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art 132 (above and opposite) Garuda Berkepala Naga (The Dragon-headed Garuda) (stills) 2021 Two-channel video installation with found objects / Installed dimensions variable / Commissioned for APT10 / Courtesy: The artists Through long overland journeys — tracking the Pacific Ring of Fire, sneaking across borders or walking the Jakarta coastline — Tita Salina and Irwan Ahmett collect stories, stage public interventions and develop witty and suggestive narratives delivered through performances and installations. Their practice centres around travelling and working closely with communities in public spaces, combining research with imagined histories to question our relationships across micro and macro environments and timelines. Over the course of 2020–21, Salina and Ahmett reconsidered their relationship with travel and developed narratives closer to home, including Garuda Berkepala Naga (The Dragon-headed Garuda) 2021. This work is inspired by the attempted Garuda- shaped island development in Jakarta Bay, which the artists consider in relation to the broad historical context of Nusantara (Indonesian archipelago). The artists document and imagine the local history and its place in evolutionary timelines in the form of a narrated film that meanders through the Jakarta coastal shores and communities, accumulating a collection of found objects. Tarun Nagesh Travelling space and time: Travelling has made us addicted to unexpected encounters full of surprises. It is like playing with our own fate, surrendering our lives to intuition rather than institution, and putting our solitary existences aside to be more open to collaboration and compromise — even though it can disrupt our egos as artists. The COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally changed our perspective on travel, interaction and the necessity to create physical artworks. For us, this present moment is the best time to look again at the relevance of art — while the world is full of uncertainties. In the journey on the Jakarta coast, for instance, we have to be more aware when we interact with other humans. COVID-19 has forced us to limit our physical relations, but the relationship between species is gradually more intimate and encourages us to have more intense interactions — like frequently visiting the last mangrove forest in Jakarta, observing estuarine fish that are dying and attempting to learn from the horseshoe crab how to survive on planet Earth for 450 million years. At this time, the Garuda Berkepala Naga emerged. High tide: In comparison to the many other journeys we have conducted, walking the Jakarta coast is the most intense. It is where the centre of power lies for the Republic of Indonesia. A magnet for 270 million residents, it is a place to harbour collective suspicion as well as hope for the future — for political and economic stability and unity. In reality, the capital is already overloaded: it is not easy to save it from the threat of land subsidence and sea-level rise. Jakarta is sinking! The city we love and hate has already become the ‘head’ of Nusantara . If decapitated, its body will also perish. Intervention: The contested narrative of the north coast of Jakarta has developed through the arrival of ancient humans, histories of seafarers sailing Nusantara , and the hegemony of Arabian, Indian, Chinese and European merchants. In this project, we intervene with the markers of civilisation that crystallised in the form of a mythological creature; through this act, we see the geopolitical accumulation of identity, imagination and perspective. Will the Dragon-headed Garuda be able to save Jakarta, or will it be sacrificed instead? Tita Salina and Irwan Ahmett Garuda Berkepala Naga (The Dragon-headed Garuda) 2021 Low tide: Ziarah Utara (Pilgrimage to the North) is our annual ritual. (In 2018–19, the ritual was undertaken with Australian artists Hannah Ekin and Jorgen Doyle.) The artistic activity is conducted by walking along the coastline of North Jakarta, stretching 42 kilometres, for 9 to 15 days. Low tide reveals stories, signs of tragedy, trash, pieces of history and fragments eroded by sea waves that come from somewhere else but catch our attention. In the beginning, we collected them without any clear purpose — just following our intuition. Three years passed and those extremely varied forms started to interfere with our imagination. Irwan saw embodied in those forms the mutilated body of a sacred mythological creature from Nusantara . For Tita, those uneven forms are an archipelago — not the heavenly kind, but a suffering archipelago. Tita Salina Born 1973, Sumatra, Indonesia Lives and work in Jakarta, Indonesia Irwan Ahmett Born 1975, Java, Indonesia Lives and work in Jakarta, Indonesia