Elaborating on the artworks
Was it love or was it colonialism? (2023) This work is a response to my research on
sexuality in colonial times. In the work, I investigate the instrumentalisation
of sexualities to uphold the colonial system. The research reflects on the deep
entanglements of marriages, colonial power, and racial hierarchies. With the
text ‘Happy Ever After?’ I am questioning these entanglements and reflects on
how difficult navigating colonial society must have been, especially as mixed
people/women of colour. How can you follow love when marriage can be
instrumentalised to climb up the colonial ladder and thereby decreasing the
oppression you faced? The colonial governing of all aspects of society entraps
all people in coloniality.
NYAI
(2023) The Nyai is a role of local Indonesian women
that often lived with settler Dutch men. For some this was more a partnership
arrangement that allowed them to be together without marriage, where their
children may or may not be acknowledged by the settler men and gained privileges in extent. However, for most
women this was a role of enslavement, where they were sexually exploited and
for labour. Some enslaved women were freed to become brides and ladies of
households. For others it was more a working arrangement, where they provided
domestic labour and sex work. The Nyai exemplified well the colonial
entanglement of sexualities, and the purposeful blurring of categories such as wife,
enslaved women, (sex)worker or Nyai. In a violent system that influences all aspect of life, it is hard to distinguish where the harm stops. The Nyai reflects the patriarchical and racial structures within colonialism.
Ancestors (2023) This work places me in my research on sexuality in colonial times. In the work, I
investigate the instrumentalisation of sexualities to uphold the colonial
system. In the research, I found that interracial marriages were an active
settler strategy by the VOC (Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie – Dutch United
East-India Company). As part of the Dutch-Indonesian community, I likely descend
from such union(s). This piece reflects on this history; the blurring of the
faces refers to the reification of cultures and race to be instrumentalised by
colonialism. Instead of seeing the people, we only see the constructs placed on
them, and what they represented in the history. It also represents the unknown
– I don’t know how they experienced their lived in this system and whether
their lives were full of harm or full of joy. I only know what they have passed
onto me through embodied knowledge – knowledge that has been as the centre of
this art practice.