Edinburgh Napier University

  The acclaimed international art festival Documenta 15 in Kassel, Germany, summer 2022 centres around an artistic, social and economic model of collectivity and communal resource sharing. Taring Padi accepted the invitation to participate in Documenta 15 as it provides a platform for further their action and solidarity works. Taring Padi was founded in Yogyakarta, Indonesia in 1998 by a group of artists and activists involved in the socio-political uprising against Suharto’s corrupt and violent military dictatorship. Taring Padi has a long history of working in solidarity with community groups on social justice and environmental issues. Taring Padi’s creative ethos involves a collective process-oriented production of artwork. They are well known for producing woodcut posters as well as creating cardboard puppets (wayang kardus), murals, banners, sculptures, and street theatre performances to support street actions. Part of Taring Padi’s contribution to Dokumenta 15 is the sharing of skills involved in producing (protest) puppets through a series of collaborative workshops with activist community groups both inside and outside Indonesia, and during the Dokumenta 15 festival itself. The creation of more than a thousand of life-sized cardboard puppets produced in these workshops give voice to the diverse range of social justice and environmental issues of importance to workshop participants.

As the first generation and academic members of taring Padi, I co-conceptualised and co-curated as well as authored the accompanying texts for the collective presentation of 24 years works in utilising art as political tools.