Connecting people through art 

Natasha Tontey

Macho Mystic Meltdown; Chapter 2: Monster; She Wrote.

Year: 2025

Media: Full HD Video

Dimensions/length: duration 13’00”,

black and white, 16:9 format, audio format stereo.

In a remote part of Indonesia in the early 1960s, at the height of the Cold War in Asia, a Permesta outcast prepares for a Minahasan ancestral ritual. This single-channel black-and-white video revisits a historical moment – or an alternative version of it – from the Permesta rebellion. Formed in Sulawesi in the late 1950s, Permesta (Perjuangan Semesta, “Universal Struggle”) began as a pro-federalist rebel movement seeking greater autonomy from the central Indonesian government, and was covertly supported by the United States, including the CIA, as part of the broader Cold War chessboard in Asia.

The work imagines a rare female fighter stationed on the front lines of Battalion Sambar Nyawa (“Life Taker”), tracing her lineage to a Minahasan warrior tradition that has largely been written out of official histories. By centering a woman within a male-dominated struggle, the video foregrounds the gendered dimensions of rebellion, state violence, and militarised heroism that still shape Minahasa today.

Through its monochrome aesthetic and ritual-driven scenes, the piece explores how historical record and myth bleed into one another, asking how unfinished conflicts – from Cold War entanglements to patriarchal control – persist as ghosts in Minahasan cultural memory.

Natasha Tontey is a Minahasan artist based in between Yogyakarta and Jakarta. Her artistic practice predominantly explores the fictional accounts of the history and myths surrounding ‘manufactured fear.’ Through her work she observes any possibilities of other futures that are projected not from the perspective of major and established institutions, but a subtle and personal struggle of the outcasted entities and beings. Her fascination with speculative fiction finds expression in experimental video works and performances.

Her recent exhibitions include the solo show Primate Visions: Macaque Macabre (2024), commissioned by Audemars Piguet Contemporary at Museum MACAN, Jakarta, and Garden Amidst the Flame(2022) at Auto Italia, London. Selected group exhibitions and screenings include presentations at 14ª Bienal do Mercosul, Porto Allegre, Brasil (2025); the 34th and 32nd Singapore International Film Festival (2021, 2023) ; the 57th and 58th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (2023, 2024); the Singapore Biennale (2023); KANAL-Centre Pompidou, Brussels (2023); De Stroom, The Hague (2022); GHOST:2565, Bangkok (2022); Protozone8 Queer Trust, Zürich (2022); Arko Art Council, Seoul (2022); Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul (2022); Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (2021); transmediale, Berlin (2021); Performance Space, Sydney (2021); Other Futures, Amsterdam (2021); Kyoto Experiment (2021); and the Asian Film Archive, Singapore (2021).

In 2020, she received the HASH Award from ZKM | Centre for Art and Media Karlsruhe and Akademie Schloss Solitude. She was a fellow on the Human Machine programme at the Junge Akademie of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin (2021–2023). In 2024, she was awarded the Han Nefkens Foundation Video Production Grant.