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For Natasha Tontey, the past is not set in stone; it is something that can be revisited, reshaped, and reimagined – especially where histories hold discomfort, silenced knowledge, and unresolved failures. By engaging with these hidden layers, she opens up the possibility of imagining alternative ways of being in the world.
In Macho Mystic Meltdown: Subtracted Anthology, Tontey weaves together personal, colonial, and ancestral histories to create three parallel worlds. Through fictionalised truths and speculative narratives, each video installation in the exhibition unfolds as three chapters of the series Macho Mystic Meltdown. As a visitor, you are invited into psychedelic, witty universes where identity becomes fluid, open to transformation, and resistant to fixed categories.
Chapter 1: Oikouménē (2025) is a psychedelic narrative based on the time Tontey’s father was lost at sea. Through the figures of The Hoarder, The Conspiracy Theorist, The Religious Believer, The Machoist, and The Sceptic of Ancestral Beliefs (Minahasa), the work engages a lifetime’s journey. Themes of memory, loss, and the porous boundaries between lived experience and speculative identity are explored.
Chapter 2: Monster; She Wrote (2025) is inspired by a notorious Minahasan woman-warrior from the 1950s who gave birth while hiding during the Permesta War in Indonesia. It reimagines her as a site of refusal, rejecting both militarism and biological destiny.
Chapter 4: In a Muscle Mood (2026), co-commissioned by 1646, Tontey presents the fictional ‘Manguni Body Building Club’, formed by Minahasa Permesta war veterans who migrated to Jakarta in the 1950s. Through their ageing, muscular, and war-worn bodies, the work explores themes of trauma, care, and fragile masculinity within the tense landscape of postcolonial Indonesia.
The work draws partial inspiration from the autobiography of Boeng Dotulong (XXXX – 2026), a Permesta veteran who relocated to Jakarta after the war and later migrated to the former colonial metropolis of the Netherlands.
Credits
Macho Mystic Meltdown; Chapter 4: In a Muscle Mood (working title)
Co-commissioned by the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève and Kamel Lazaar Foundation for BIM’26 – as part of the 8th Jaou Tunis Biennial, with the support of the Contemporary Art Fund of the City of Geneva (FMAC) and the Canton of Geneva (FCAC), 1646 – Experimental Art Space (the Netherlands), and Superposition: a festival conceived for the Blue Mountains (Australia)
Macho Mystic Meltdown; Chapter 2: Monster; She Wrote
Commissioned by Han Nefkens Foundation – Loop Barcelona Video Art Production Grant 2024, in collaboration with Art Hub Copenhagen; ILHAM Gallery, Kuala Lumpur; Inside-Out Art Museum, Beijing; MAXXI, Rome; MoCA, Taipei; MOT, Tokyo; and Museu Picasso Barcelona
Macho Mystic Meltdown; Chapter 1: Oikouménē
Commissioned for the MUNCH Triennale 2025
Photo credit: Leandro Quintero
Natasha Tontey (1989) is a Minahasan artist based between Yogyakarta and Jakarta. Her artistic practice predominantly explores the fictional accounts of the history and myths surrounding ‘manufactured fear.’ Through her work, she observes the possibilities of other futures that are projected not from the perspective of major and established institutions, but a subtle and personal struggle of the outcast entities and beings. Her fascination with speculative fiction finds expression in experimental video works and performances.
Her recent exhibitions include the solo show Primate Visions: Macaque Macabre (2024), commissioned by Audemars Piguet Contemporary at Museum MACAN, Jakarta, and Garden Amidst the Flame (2022) at Auto Italia, London. Selected group exhibitions and screenings include presentations at 14ª Bienal do Mercosul, Porto Alegre, Brazil (2025); the 32nd and 34th Singapore International Film Festival (2021,2023); the 57th and 58th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (2023, 2024); the Singapore Biennale (2023); KANAL-Centre Pompidou, Brussels (2023); Stroom, The Hague (2022); GHOST:2565, Bangkok (2022); Protozone8 Queer Trust, Zürich (2022); Arko Art Council, Seoul (2022); Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul (2022); Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (2021); transmediale, Berlin (2021); Performance Space, Sydney (2021); Other Futures, Amsterdam (2021); Kyoto Experiment (2021); and the Asian Film Archive, Singapore (2021).
In 2020, Tontey received the HASH Award from ZKM | Centre for Art and Media Karlsruhe and Akademie Schloss Solitude. She was a fellow on the Human Machine programme at the Junge Akademie of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin (2021–2023). In 2024, she was awarded the Han Nefkens Foundation Video Production Grant.
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