Natasha Tontey

WORKS

Garden Amidst the Flame

Garden Amidst the Flame (27 minutes, HD film, 2022) continues Tontey’s ongoing research into the ancient knowledge, technologies and cosmology of the Minahasa, an Indigenous nation in the North Sulawesi province of Indonesia. In this most recent work, the artist emphasises core Minahasa cultural beliefs in the all-encompassing equilibrium between the human and non-human. Drawing on her experience of karai, a ceremony that grants Minahasan warriors an armour of invincibility, the artist seeks to establish a queering approach towards gender, youth and ecology.