Edinburgh Napier University

  Taring Padi’s works in utilising art as political tools in the past 25 years demonstrate that it has been and it will be colonialism, its continuous impacts and metamorphosis are responsible for the worsening injustice in the world. This is not a naive and simplistic view toward the world’s multi-layered problems. This is a clarity of standpoint and direction of our struggle.

The 1955 Asia-Africa Conference in Bandung, Indonesia has warned us “colonialism is an evil thing, and one which must eradicated from the earth.” The surface of the earth should be free from colonialism and colonialist ideas and attitudes. It should be a liberated land, TANAH MERDEKA. It is not coincidental that one of the persistent issues in Taring Padi’s works is the LAND, the surface of the earth: defending the land, occupying the land for the people, the right for the land, and the mother of the land and earth (ibu pertiwi). Land has become not only the actual territory that we have to defend and occupy but also a metaphor for space where conversation between different communities and struggles are possible: a cosmology keep us close to the ground.

I co-conceptualised, co-curated and authored accommpanying texts