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The imagery on the postcard promoting the opening is both stark and compelling. It shows the year ‘1965’ painted in blood red, the blood dripping and weeping down the wall towards the kneeling figure of Dadang Christanto. His body is averted, smeared in white clay between two brown baskets, emptied of flowers. The dark blue wall is the colour of twilight, against which his white earthly body turns towards the light. The image is from Christanto’s 2015 re-performance of For Those Who Have Been Killed (1993). The year 1965 resonates through much of Christanto’s work and refers to the Suharto backed anti-communist purge which, from 1965 to 1966, lead to the deaths of one and a half million Indonesians. At the age of eight, Christanto saw his own father dragged from his home by soldiers—he never saw or heard from this father again, there has never been an official explanation or an apology. Sadly, his story is not an exception, there were reports of the rivers in Indonesia becoming clogged with tortured, decapitated and castrated bodies.
The exhibition screened original footage from Christanto’s For Those Who Have Been Killed (1993) a performance from ‘The First Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT1). This performance began in Brisbane’s Queen Street Mall, where, surrounded by shoppers, Christanto covered himself in white clay, to transform his being. As a bewildered outsider, Christanto stared dumbfounded at ATM machines and glass shopfront windows. He then crossed the Victoria Bridge to the Queensland Art Gallery where he danced amongst his well known artwork, For those: Who Are Poor, Who Are Suffer(ing), Who Are Oppressed, Who Are Voiceless, Who Are Powerless, Who Are Burdened, Who Are Victims