Asmara Abigail

Didascalia

@las_artfoundation (Berlin) and @amoskonst (Helsinki) present a new commission by Natasha Tontey @krazykosmickid at Ateneo Veneto on the occasion of Biennale di Venezia – 61st International Art Exhibition. Tontey’s multimedia installation relays the story of a 1950s female resistance fighter in Indonesia. Exploring physical and chemical transformation, Minahasan symbolism and contemporary military imaging, the work addresses the sovereignty of bodies, cultures and land. The Phantom Combatants and the Metabolism of Disobedient Organs is Tontey’s most ambitious work to date. It is commissioned by LAS Art Foundation and Amos Rex, two future-oriented art institutions founded within the last ten years to support new artistic practices in a technological age. The Phantom Combatants is presented at Ateneo Veneto, Venice’s academy of science, literature and the arts, located in San Marco in a sixteenth-century building. On arrival, visitors ascend a walkway into an environment of video, sound, light and sculptural elements. At the centre of the installation, Tontey’s video reimagines the story of Len Karamoy, a combatant in Permesta, a political movement in North Sulawesi fighting the centralised rule of the Indonesian government from 1957 to 1961 with support from the CIA. In Tontey’s retelling, Karamoy is not a single historical figure but a mythic presence, multiplied into the ‘Phantom Combatants’ through a chorus of young troops. Her mutant body — with three breasts and exaggerated muscles — emerges as a flamboyant emblem of self-determination, whose disobedient organs metabolise ancestral and insurgent forces. So grateful and proud to be part of Natasha Tontey’s Phantom Combatants. Cheers for more collaboration in the future ✨❤️‍🔥💜 Thank you @hypebeastid for the coverage and the article ✨🫦