Graves, a Water Tower, and a Dam: Encounters with the Archive

This essay reflects on two encounters with historical records: a trip to West Papua to visit the grave of Arnold Clemens Ap and the Biak Water Tower, and a reading of Moelyono’s archive on the Wonorejo Dam project in East Java. Although these encounters occurred in different places and emerge from distinct historical conditions, both were shaped by the legacies of the New Order (1966–1998), a policy implemented under Suharto (1921–2008).

RongRong&inri: Making Spaces as Practice

What does it mean to make work that necessarily includes others? To commit to decades-long collaboration? To submit oneself to change under the influence of nature? These are the questions that underpin the work of the artist collective RongRong&inri, currently based in Kyoto, Japan. In 2000, RongRong (b. 1968, Fujian Province) and inri (b. 1973,…

Healing in Community: A Conversation with aqui Thami 

aqui Thami is a Thangmi woman of the Kiratimma first peoples of the Himalayas. Her practice positions art as a medium of healing in community, grounded in social exchange, participation, and collaboration. Spanning ceremonial interventions, performance, drawing, zine-making, fly-posting, and public intervention, her interdisciplinary work is often self-funded and collectively realized. Her artistic pursuits are…

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Histories, Convivialities, and Art Practices in Modern Indonesia

In speaking about “modern Indonesia,” I am thinking less in terms of chronology or style and more in terms of conviviality as practice: the everyday negotiation of languages, traditions, faiths, empires, merchants, farmers, rulers, and neighbors. The “modern” was—and remains—about relations: how to live together, how to keep conversations open, how to practice care even when histories, hierarchies, and inequalities persist.

Dreaming of Food, Air, and Water: In Conversation with Rajyashri Goody 

Rajyashri Goody (b. 1990) queries food and water politics, Ambedkarite Buddhist practices, literacy and Dalit literature, and mobility and place-making in the context of caste-based violence and Dalit resistance in India. She works primarily with paper pulp, clay, text, photography, and printmaking. What follows is an abbreviated account of Goody’s session with the C-MAP Bombay/Mumbai Group.…

On Vrishchik: A Conversation with Gulammohammed Sheikh 

Gulammohammed Sheikh (b. 1937) is an artist, pedagogue, and writer known for his prolific career across practices that include curating and publishing. Sheikh taught art history and painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda—the foremost institute for avant-garde practice during the post-Independence period—for almost three decades, spearheading an…

Triangle Network in Zimbabwe: An Oral History with Berry Bickle

The Triangle Network is a global network of artists and visual arts organizations that supports professional development and cultural exchange among artists, curators, and other arts professionals worldwide. It was initiated in 1982 by Anthony Caro and Robert Loder in New York City with the first Triangle Artists’ Workshop, and over the next two decades,…