The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Jakarta (Museum MACAN) presents Primate Visions: Macaque Macabre by Natasha Tontey, on view through April 6th, 2025. This ambitious installation, commissioned by Audemars Piguet Contemporary, immerses visitors in a fantastical world exploring the intertwined lives of humans and black-crested macaques, or Yaki, as understood in Minahasan culture.
Tontey delves into the paradoxical relationship between the endangered Yaki—revered in local traditions but often seen as pests—and their coexistence with Minahasan communities. The exhibition incorporates installations and a multi-channel video, inviting audiences to navigate a dark, cave-like space that reflects the film’s surreal narrative. The film’s protagonists, two primatologists, embark on an absurdist journey filled with symbolic encounters, such as a dinner offering an immortality-granting pudding and a visit to a biomedical lab, while questioning the boundaries between humans and animals.
One of the exhibition’s standout characters, Xenomorphia, blends human and macaque features, adorned in a tail made of bones and skulls inspired by traditional Minahasan warrior costumes. Another installation disrupts conventional viewing by integrating cut-out screens that invite visitors to reflect on how macaques might perceive human observers.
By blending Minahasan cosmology, speculative fiction, and critical humor, Tontey challenges audiences to rethink their relationship with nature and non-human entities. “Humans are not the center of the ecosystem,” the artist asserts.
Primate Visions: Macaque Macabre is both a meditation on environmental preservation and a playful exploration of myths and interspecies connections.
Installation shots of Primate Visions: Macaque Macabre, by NATASHA TONTEY, at Museum MACAN
Commissioned by Audemars Piguet Contemporary
Courtesy of NATASHA TONTEY and AUDEMARS PIGUET
