WEST PAPUA IS NOT AN EMPTY LAND / Papua bukan tanah kosong
Artists: Alyakha Kolektif (Markus Rumbino with Brian Suebu, Syors Deda and Marzamel Kristian Guijangge), Fitri DK, Dicky Takndare, Taring Padi, Muhammad ‘Ucup’ Yusuf, + screening of documentary: Pesta Babi/Pig Feast: Colonialism in our time
Opening screening and conversations: 10 October at 2 pm
With Sophie Chao, anthropologist who has studied the often fraught relationship between Papuans and plantation firms
Exhibition runs 10 October to 7 November 2026
The Cross Art Projects
West Papua is not an empty land relays conversations, critique, and shared cultural knowledge amongst leading artists and voices from Indonesia’s post-colonial and environmental movements. Artists from three activist groups—Taring Padi formed in 1998, Udeido in 2018, and Alyakha Kolektif formed a year later—use painting, woodblock, film and sound art with acuity and spirit, to amplify awareness of accelerating land theft in West Papua to regional audiences.
These artistic alliances (notably in Yogyakarta and from other eastern islands of the archipelago) counter industrial scale “food estates” and corporate-run monocrops in West Papua by visualising the struggle for indigenous land sovereignty and the recognition of Papua’s Melanesian culture that ignited when Indonesia took over the former Dutch East Indes in 1969, after an internationally disputed ballot for an ‘Act of Free Choice’ (known to Papuans as the Act of No Choice).
The exhibition centrepiece is the documentary film Pesta Babi: Colonialism in Our Time (2026) directed by journalist Dandhy Laksono and anthropologist Cypri Dale. It focusses on the escalation in land clearing concessions in Papua under president Prabowo Subianto and his predecessor Joko Widodo. A case study—the Merauke Sugarcane Project—investigates a ‘consortium’ of ten companies owned by two interconnected families active in the palm oil industry. The Merauke concession area is the size of Bali, and consists of forests, savanna and wetlands owned, inhabited and held sacred by Papuans for millennia.
Laksono and Dale methodically refute the shimmering claims made by national food estate and bioethanol projects. Adding the word ‘national’ enables corporate use of the military to intimidate Papuans and bypass customary law rights of indigenous peoples promised in the Indonesian Constitution of 1945. West Papua is not an empty land features the important documentary work of artists, activists and human rights experts, as United Nations and media access to the region have been denied for decades, allowing dispossession and theft to hide in plain sight. We are indeed privileged to view Pesta Babi/Pig Feast here in Sydney, as throughout Indonesia, screenings and discussions on the film circulate by word of mouth due to state intervention and censorship.[1]
Unlike the small, poverty-stricken island of East Timor, which gained formal independence from Indonesia in 2002 after three decades of bitter, scorched earth struggle, West Papua is still locked into Indonesian rule. It covers over one fifth of Indonesia’s land mass and is one of the country’s most resource-rich provinces. Papua hosts the world’s third-largest rainforest and wetlands and is a global biodiversity shield. It is now in danger of falling prey to the deforestation damage (including increasingly intense regional wildfires) that the Sulawesi islands, Sumatra and Kalimantan (the Indonesian portion of Borneo) already suffer in Indonesia’s bid to become the world’s leading producer of palm oil.[2]
Dicky Takndare from Udeido and Alyakha Kolektif’s spokesperson Markus Rumbino highlight historical misrepresentations. They show how colonialism, racism and state-sponsored actions seek to erase ancestral culture. West Papua is not an empty land presents a selection of work on bark cloth from Alyakha Kolektif’s audiovisual installation Kiney Waloboney (ARTJOG 2026). Kiney Waloboney is one name of the Dewa Matahari (God of the Sun) that has the strength to grant well-being and a balance in life. As curator Alia Swastika explained in her ARTJOG companion text, “Kiney Waloboney is a legendary ancestral figure in the village of Puay (flowing water), where three clans-Awoitauw, Fiobetauw, and Mimitauw-hold customary territorial rights.”
Alyakha Kolektif is based in the customary village of Yokiwa on Lake Sentani, near Jayapura, and draws upon the distinctive artistic practices of Sentani culture centred on and around this sacred lake. Led by co-founders Markus Rumbino, a Papuan composer and music researcher, and community development worker Irma Awoitauw, the collective learns from residencies (including a residency with Dicky Takndare) and an allied arts festival. In this way, they affirm the values embedded in indigenous lands and waters and promote the voices of a new generation grappling with how to be Papuan in the world.
Alyakha’s practice includes community-led sound walks and an archiving process designed for cultural continuity. Markus Rumbino contributes a selected soundtrack of these field recordings. Associated paintings on barkcloth are by mid-career artists Brian Suebu, Syors Deda and emerging artist Marzamel Kristian Guijangge. In Papua, competition for resources extends to an unregulated tourist art market that exploits or ignores customary design copyright, and has helped deplete the available young mulberry trees needed to make barkcloth.
Handmade bark cloth is called Khombouw in the Sentani language and is a medium that acknowledges the important role of women in passing on culture. The process involves several stages: select and cut a Khombouw tree with a trunk diameter of approximately 30 to 50 cm, remove the bark from the trunk and peel away the outer layer, then soak in water overnight. Then the women beat the harder part of the bark repeatedly until it spreads and becomes soft and flexible, and reaches approximately one metre by one metre in size. After that, the bark cloth is dried in the sun for a day while it is stretched, so that the Khombouw bark becomes smooth and does not shrink or curl. When completely dry it can be used as a medium for painting.
Udeido draws on the imaginative activism of an earlier generation of Papuan cultural figures such as Eddie Mofu (unknown–1984), Arnold Clemens Ap (1945–1984) and others. Udeido highlights their influential, anti-colonial methodology through collective installations, performances and individual works. In 2021, art and environmental movements started to align with Black Lives Matter protests. Biennale Jogja XVI Equator #6 Indonesia with Oceania: Roots < > Routes turned to artists from long neglected eastern Indonesia and Oceania, and Udeido was among those regional artists chosen to reckon with the nation’s violent past.
Indonesian violence in West Papua included targeted assassinations of leading Papuan cultural figures such as museum curator, musician and popular weekly radio presenter Arnold Ap, along with Eddie Mofu, who formed the band Mambesak in 1978 and performed songs in over thirty local languages, laying the foundations for a modern, united Papuan cultural identity. Ap’s role as curator of the ethnographic museum in Cenderawasih University in Jayapura included extensive field recordings of music. Some of Ap’s recordings were spirited out of Papua shortly after his murder.
Writing on Udeido’s practice, Australian art historians Ellie Kent and Wulan Dirgantoro draw on Benedict Anderson’s 1991 observation that the assassination of cultural figures are never accidental, ‘for museums, and the museumising imagination, are both profoundly political’.[3] They note that Benedict Anderson uses Ap’s story as an example of the power of the museum to the colonial project and ‘a distant Jakarta(‘s)’ inheritance of political manoeuvres from its own former colonisers.
Alyakha Kolektif and Udeido’s practice sit within a broad counter-context in which artists from the Pacific, Asia and Africa reclaim myths of primitivism first created by colonising armies and administrators, missionaries and anthropologists. Primitivism was a well-spring for European modernist artists, and enjoyed a late flowering in Eurocentric, postmodernist blockbusters like Primitivism (MoMA 1984) and Magiciens de la Terre (Pompidou, 1989), the latter arguing for the ‘universality’ of the creative impulse guided and revealed by cultures of the West.
Taring Padi was formed during the mass protests that helped end the New Order years of Suharto (1966-98), the military general who presided over ‘the killing times’ of a brutal and corrupt regime (Indonesia’s current president Prabowo is Suharto’s son-in-law). The inter-generational group works with community activists to create woodcut posters and cardboard puppets, banners and music, often for orchestrated performances derived from Wayang Kulit, the spellbinding traditional shadow puppet shows that present epic good versus evil Hindu texts and offer a unique combination of ritual, lesson and spectacle. Woodblock prints by highly regarded members Mohammad Yusuf (Ucup) and Fitri DK give stylistic integrity to the founding principles, “organise, educate, agitate!”
The group’s banners have moved from caricatures and crimes of the New Order regime to series supporting workers’ rights and land struggles in Java and Papua. The giant banner ‘Peoples Justice’ (2002) tells the story of living under Suharto’s military dictatorship as do a series of cheaply made “election posters” like ‘Posisi bukan kesempatan untuk Korupsi/ A position is not an opportunity for corruption’ pasted up in the same year. After Documenta 15 (Kassel, Germany, 2022) censored ‘People’s Justice’, Taring Padi has worked to form progressive artist alliances. Examples include with Jewish progressive artist collective Casa de Povo in Brazil and the exhibition workshopped with the Indigenous Australian artist collective proppaNOW and exhibited as Tanah Tumpah Darah (Motherland) at Griffith University Art Museum (Brisbane, 2024). They are aware that every artistic device is also economic and relational, as in the installation People’s Liberation at Sale Docks for this year’s Venice Biennale, where merch and artworld spectacle mingle with Palestinian solidarity takeaways to create a different economic model for the artworld.
The colonial concept of terra nullius or an empty land underwrites the actions of nations who trade well-settled Indigenous lands and natural resources to cronies. While the names of Papua’s colonisers have changed with shifting geopolitical history, for Papuans there is one constant situation — the human rights struggle and an ongoing lack of choice created by Jakarta’s promotion of institutional racism and ethnic Indonesian migration to Papua. Over 122,000 Indigenous Papuans have already been displaced for the Merauke biofuel ventures alone.
Rukka Sombolinggi, secretary-general of the Indigenous Peoples’ Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN), the country’s largest advocacy group for Indigenous rights, called out the government’s decision to establish the food estate projects in areas home to forest-dependent communities. She noted how that decision shows just how the country’s politicians perceive Indigenous Papuans: “The notion that Papua is an empty land is always being pushed [by the government]… Even if there are people there, they’re ‘savages.’ That’s exactly what the Dutch did when they tried to colonize Indonesia and called some people ‘savages’ because they couldn’t be controlled [by the Dutch]. And that’s such a colonial mindset.”
— Jo Holder
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Notes
- Following a wave of disrupted screenings across Indonesia of Pesta Babi the filmmakers uploaded Pesta Babi to YouTube and encourage free and wide screening of the film. I heard about Pesta Babi from Ruth Odonko a Bali-based Indonesian curator who in June 2026 rescheduled and relocated a screening after a “cautionary” phone call from authorities. See: https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/officials-tried-to-silence-papua-film-pesta-babi-it-drew-millions-of-views-on-youtube-instead and Jakarta Globe – https://jakartaglobe.id/lifestyle/indonesia-says-pesta-babi-screenings-were-never-banned
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Sarjan Lahay (2024). Indonesia palm oil lobby pushes 1 million hectares of new Sulawesi plantations. Mongabay Conservation news. See: https://doi.org/10.66709/news-285846 and Download Inside the Merauke Sugarcane Project report (December 2025)
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Benedict Anderson, Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and Spread of nationalism, 1991, is cited by Ellie Kent and Wulan Dirgantoro 2024 and Diana Glazebrook, 2008.
Fitri DK, Hidden Disaster, woodcut print on paper, 60 x 80 cm, 2025.
Fitri DK, Derita Sudah Naik Seleher / Up to our necks with suffering, 2018. Woodcut print on paper, 80 x 60 cm, edition of 10.
Muhammad ‘Ucup’ Yusuf, Simbok, 2020, woodblock print on cloth, edition 4/5.
Muhammad ‘Ucup’ Yusuf, Kejoramambesak, 2011, woodblock print with hand colouring on fabric, 1/5 (AP1).
Muhammad ‘Ucup’ Yusuf, Setara, 2020, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 60 cm.
Dicky Takndare, Flag of Our Children, Mixed Media Installation, 2024, installation view. From the collection of Konfir Kabo.
Dicky Takndare, Flag of Our Children (sculptural component), Mixed Media Installation, 2024. From the collection of Konfir Kabo.
Artists & collectives
Alyakha Collective: established 2019 in Yokiwa Village, Lake Sentani. They have participated in many national and international platforms, including Jakarta Biennale 2024, Sonic Entanglements (Netherlands), EarthSonic 2026 (UK), and ‘SOTYA’ (Sound of the Years) 2026 (UK). Led by the founders, Markus Rumbino and Irma Awoitauw, the artists have diverse backgrounds in fine arts, crafts and performance art. Follow: IG @alyakhaartcenter
Taring Padi: formed in 1998, is an art collective based in Yogyakarta Indonesia that uses art as a tool for political expression and education. Currently comprises about twenty people and maintains links with allied artist collectives and communities. Follow: https://www.taringpadi.com
Udeido collective: comprises West Papuan artists Nelson Natkime (b. 1999), Yanto Gombo (b. 1996), Andre Takimai (b. 1994), Betty Adii (b. 1996), Constantinus Ruharusun (b. 1994), Michael Yan Devis (b. 1996) and Dicky Takndare (b. 1988). Follow: IG udeido_collective
Recent Exhibitions on West Papua
Bakudengar at Museum Arnhem, Netherlands, 2026.
Artists: Fitri DK, Gegerboyo, Hans van Houwelingen / Iswanto Hartono / Mirwan Andan, Gert Jan Kocken, Agung Kurniawan, Geraldy Laimera, Maryanto, Ipeh Nur, Dicky Takndare, and Jennifer Tee.
Lawan!/Fight at Framer Framed, Amsterdam 2025
Featuring presentations by Watch65, Kevin van Braak and Udeido Collective.
Tijd voor Papoea or Time for Papua at Wereld Museum, Leiden, 2026
A collection survey with the emphasis on the ecological and humanitarian crises in Papua and the role of collections in the West for the Papuans in New Guinea and the diaspora in the Netherlands.
Ears to the East at Udeido Studio, Kasihan, Bantul, a collateral exhibition for ARTJOG2024 by artists from Papua and Makassar featuring Abdi Karya, Albertho Wanma Dicky Takndare and Sandroseni.
Kal Angam-Kal: Stories from West Papua at Footscray Community Arts, Melbourne, 2024. A documentary exhibition bringing together Elders and Young people from the Narm (Melbourne) based West Papuan community. At: https://papuanvoices.net/
West Papua human rights and environment
Arena, Journal (Melbourne) articles by Susan Connolley, especially ‘Imagining West Papua’
Sophie Chao, “West Papua and Black Lives Matter,” Inside Indonesia issue 140, June 17, 2020.
Sophie Chao, In the Shadow of the Palms: More-Than-Human Becomings in West Papua, 2021, Duke University Press.
Diana Glazebrook, Permissive Residents. West Papuan refugees living in Papua New Guinea, ANU e-book, 2008. On Arnold Ap and Benedict Anderson.
Indigenous Peoples’ Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN) at https://www.aman.or.id/
Sue Jackson, West Papua Rising: Music under the occupation, Overland, 2017. At https://overland.org.au/2017/03/west-papua-rising-artists-under-the-occupation/
Hans Nicholas Jong, Indonesia risks carbon ‘backfire’ with massive deforestation for sugarcane, Mongabay Conservation News, 2024.
ELSHAM Papua and Asia Justice and Rights (2022) Transitional Justice in Australia and the Pacific Series: Papua Case Study.
Greenpeace Indonesia, ‘Inside the Merauke Sugarcane Project’, December 2025.
John Martinkus, The Road: Uprising in West Papua, 2020. Alleges that Indonesian troops have used chemical weapons and killed hundreds of people and displaced tens of thousands.
Contemporary Indonesian art, artists & collectives
Yvonne Carillon-Huffman, ‘Contesting identity: Paintings from Lake Sentani’, 2013, Australian Museum, Sydney.
Ibraaz art and ideas, London: Taring Padi
Alexander Supartono, ‘Taring Padi: Tanah Merdeka’, FramerFramed, Amsterdam, 2023.
‘Taring Padi: Tanah Tumpah Darah’, 2024 Griffith University Art Museum, Brisbane.
Elly Kent, Wulan Dirgantoro on the documenta 15 controversy: We need to talk! Art, offence and politics in Documenta 15
Elly Kent, Wulan Dirgantoro & Udeido Collective, ‘Udeido: strategically amplifying disruptive Papuan narratives in Indonesia’s art centre’ in World Art Volume 14, 2024, Issue 2: Rethinking Primitivisms in the Modern Art of Southeast Asia
Human Rights
Free West Papua: alliance founded in 2004 and based in UK, Netherlands, Moresby and Perth. Led by Billy Wenda who fled West Papua.
West Papua National Committee (KNPB) advocates for an independence referendum with support from solidarity networks, including the International Parliamentarians for West Papua (IPWP), the International Lawyers for West Papua (ILWP), and the Pacific Coalition on West Papua (PCWP).
Human Rights Watch: 2024 – list of recommended publications
2026 – Update on land-grabs, persecution and dispossession in Papua
Watch65: conducted the landmark International People’s Tribunal on Crimes Against Humanity in Indonesia 1965. Held in The Hague in 2015, IPT65 is a voluntary justice initiative to address the mass atrocities that were directed at alleged members and sympathizers of the Partai Komunis Indonesia, as well as organizations affiliated to it. View the report.
Pacific Coalitions: Melanesian countries look to ban Indonesia’s regional status over delay of UN visit to West Papua
Acknowledgements
The Cross Art Projects would like to thank the artists, SurviveGarage (Fitri DK and Bayou Widodo), Project 11 (Konfir Kabo and Mara Sisson), 16 Albermarle (John Cruthers), Elly Kent, Cammi Webb-Gannon, Sophie Chao, Belle Blau, Reiana Aramoana, Phillip Boulten and Catriona Moore.