Beyond the Future: Papers from the Third Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

I nstallation shots of Tuba-rai metin at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, in August 1 996 , show the uma-lulik, the traditional Tetum spirit house bu ilt by Don Antonio Maia, and the twenty-one katupas sculptures made by Albertina Viegas, one for each of the twenty-one years since the Indonesian invasion of East Timor. A Cathol ic priest officiated in the ceremony to celebrate the installation of the exhibition , with participation in a ritual of mourning by Dona Veronica and Don Anton io, Albertina Viegas and many and others from the Timorese community, taking part. The tais, the weaving, was worked on at each of the venues where the project was d isplayed - the women sat and weaved and talked with visitors to the house. For this ritual at the MCA it was wrapped around the house. Tuba-rai metin, then, was a very sophisticated negotiation across many issues and territories: the Timorese desire for independence, the resistance of successive Indonesian governments to the sustained Timorese struggle for freedom , and Austral ia as a s ite for political struggle around th is issue. Successive Austral ian governments have also been compl icit in the question of Timor and Australian public opinion involved : Timorese independence is certainly the most deeply-felt issue in Australian foreign pol icy since the end of the American war in Vietnam . Tuba-rai metin also placed these issues very successfully and centrally in the arena of the contemporary art world : it intervened into it, bringing into the local context questions which have reverberations as far away as Jakarta, Lisbon and the Un ited Nations in New York. Again, like the Brahma Tirta Sari/Utopia Batik project, Tuba-rai metin negotiated across local and reg ional lines, with a sophisticated address that suggests that the local/global d ichotomy is insufficiently nuanced to comprehend the complexity and richness of contemporary work or contemporary circuits of exchange. To conclude, I am arguing here for attending up close to the webs of relationsh ips - cultural, political and institutional - that make up this current world of contemporary art practice. For it is in the projects of artists, working together and with their audiences, that we may see positive and productive relationships between peoples. In this sad week of the post­ independence referendum carnage in East Timor, I want to salute the work of Australian, I ndonesian and Timorese artists to articulate desires and ideas across local boundaries to the wider world . Slides shown : Brahma Tirta Sari Studio Parang kembang 1 993 batik on silk H ilda (Cookie) Pwerl Utopia Batik detail of cloth showing her broad painterly style Lena Pwerl and Agus lsmoyo working in Yogyakarta in 1 994 6 slides of the Brahma Tirta Sari/Utopia batik workshop - note the chap of the Anmatyerr country that the artist is hold ing Albertina - the successful young artist in a cover story in The Good Weekend', Sydney Morning Herald. The lead katupas form of her sculptures refers to her Timorese origin. Installation shots of Tuba-rai metin at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, in August 1 996 1 09