The Interplay of Movement and Memory in the Works of Tintin Wulia

[page 9] 

Arriving at the end of the gently curving line of passports that have been affixed to the floor, walls and ceiling of the gallery, you come across an arcade-style claw machine that is filled with handmade passports. The machine invites you to participate in a game of chance; it is uncertain whether you will win a passport at all or, if you do, which country’s passport you will get. This interactive installation work by Tintin Wulia, which is titled Lure (2009) [see Figures 1 and 2], was one of the works featured in the special exhibition What a Wonderful World, held in 2012. The exhibition aimed to re-examine our world through the expressions of artists from Asian countries and to inspire reflections on the future. At that time, Wulia was already known for her works using handmade passports that closely resembled real passports from around the world. In preparing for the exhibition, I learned a great deal from her. Her grandfather, she shared, had gone missing during the mass killing in Indonesia in 1965, and her family, being of Chinese descent and a minority in Indonesia, had faced numerous forms of discrimination. Despite holding a government-issued passport, she had encountered various difficulties at immigration in the past. I tried to recall conversations that I had shared with my grandparents when I was little, and to summon memories of past trips, but I had never experienced anything similar. I had a passport issued by the Japanese government even from when I was a student, yet I had never felt any discomfort about possessing a passport with the word ‘Japan’ on it. To me, a passport was merely a convenient certificate that allowed me to travel freely anywhere in the world. Encountering Wulia and her work marked the first time that I deeply reflected on the complex issues caused by the national systems underlying passports, as well as the tragedy that befell Indonesia during a period when post-war Japan was experiencing economic growth. Looking back, I have always felt that I should seek another opportunity to introduce the works of Tintin Wulia.

Twelve years have passed since then. When I organised Wulia’s first solo exhibition in Japan, held in Hiroshima, I recall telling her that I wanted to include not only her recent works but also some of her earlier pieces, essentially making it a retrospective. Her early works as an artist took the form of short films. These films, characterised by their brief duration, were rich in symbols and metaphors. They showcased her intelligence, wit, and humour, as well as her remarkable sense of cohesion, integrating numerous elements seamlessly. Over time, the filmic elements expanded into material-based forms and eventually leapt into spatial dimensions, liberating themselves from the constraints of time. This evolution led to the style that now defines her work, which comprises of multifaceted installations comprising numerous interconnected components. Rooted in themes of movement and border-crossing, Wulia’s art not only explores these ideas conceptually but also embodies them physically within the exhibition space, moving and transcending boundaries.

As you stand at the gallery entrance, a range of vibrant elements will immediately catch your attention. When installing the works in the limited space of the gallery, we focused on the following key points. First, in order not to detract from the sense of ‘openness’ inherent in Wulia’s works, we intentionally created a composition where different works interact, rather than isolating each one. Second, we aimed to design a space where the multitude of ‘connections’ could not only be made more visible but also be experienced directly. By doing so, we sought to intentionally disclose a wealth of information simultaneously. Even when viewers focus on a single piece, they will naturally glimpse other works in their peripheral vision. While it may initially feel overwhelming to process and organise all of this information, but as viewers continue to engage with the exhibition, they will gradually uncover its underlying themes. These include Wulia’s Chinese-Balinese roots and the tragedy that her family endured during the Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66. Using these events and family memories as a foundation, Wulia’s interests expand to explore themes such as migration and border crossings, the experiences of ethnic minorities and discrimination, the formation of identity and belonging, and the distortion of history by state power. Her works also delve into the silence and fear that is imposed on individuals, the trauma that can be embedded in communities, and the conflicts and wars that surround geopolitical borders.

The method with which the installation (Re)Collection of Togetherness (2007–)[See p. 29, this book] changes iteratively each time it is exhibited; in Hiroshima, the colourful passports were suspended from ‘clouds’ that appeared to represent a cloudy sky. This imagery evokes the ‘black rain’ that fell on Hiroshima after the atomic bombing of the city. Consisting of mud, dust, and soot generated by the explosion, as well as oil smoke from the massive fires that ensued, the black rain is known to have contained radioactive materials. If we view rain as a blessing that pours down from the heavens, it might symbolise a convenient and welcome tool enabling us to move freely around the world. However, if we think of it as the black rain that contaminated vast areas with radioactivity and caused immense suffering for many people, how does that shift our perspective? As mentioned above, black rain refers specifically to ‘toxic rain containing radioactive materials.’ Yet, in a broader sense, it also serves as a metaphor for the invisible horrors and suffering that is caused by war and the indelible scars that it leaves behind. In Masuji Ibuse’s novel Kuroi Ame (Black Rain) (1966), one soldier’s words linger: ‘We wanted to be born in a country without a state,’ as he silently carries decaying corpses that lie before him and throws them into a hole. The passports pouring down from the black clouds covering the upper space of the gallery are not only clear evidence of the existence of nations but also a reminder that some borders cannot be freely crossed and that wars continued to be waged over these borders even today.

The title of the exhibition, Things-in-Common, refers to the way in which a ‘common thing’ can catch an individual’s attention through some kind of trigger (which Wulia describes as an ‘aesthetic object’), or appeal to us in another way. I understand this as a form of encounter. For example, the ‘passport’ becomes a ‘thing-in-common’ through Wulia’s work. Similarly, ‘1965’ also becomes a ‘thing-in-common’ through her encounter with On Kawara’s work Title (1965). In her work Subtext – after Kawara’s Title, 1965 (2019) [p. 53], Wulia expands ‘1965’, which Kawara represented as ‘one thing’ across three canvases, into 68 canvases, thereby unfolding both its temporal and

[page 10] 

spatial dimensions. These canvases traverse the gallery space like migratory birds, crossing over the boundaries of the spaces where other works are installed, moving high above the other works and across the ceiling.

If you look around the gallery again, you will notice that the principle of ‘movement’ applies not only to humans, but also to insects. For example, the mosquito, often believed to travel long distances by hiding in containers and riding on clouds, repeatedly appears in Wulia’s works as a symbol of movement. Another motif is the butterfly, and in particularly the Papilio Ulysses, which is found in the eastern part of Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and northern Australia, which is featured in the work Some Memory Unfurls (2023) [p. 23]. Butterflies are often seen as symbols of magnificent metamorphosis, transforming from unappealing caterpillars into beautiful, glamorous, winged adults. However, Wulia is particularly intrigued by the process of metamorphosis itself, where, even as the caterpillar liquefies and dissolves into a sludge inside the chrysalis, it retains its ‘memory’. In other words, the butterfly in Wulia’s work serves as a metaphor for ‘memory’. Through the presence of this small butterfly, we are invited to reflect on the (traumatic) memories that are passed down through generations in communities that have been alienated from society and have migrated.

Wulia also observes the principle of ‘movement’ in the cardboard waste (Old Corrugated Cardboard/OCC) that is a ubiquitous sight on the streets of Hong Kong. Cardboard boxes, originally used to safely transport goods, become waste once they have fulfilled their purpose. However, they are not literally ‘discarded’. Collected by waste pickers, OCC is compressed into large, heavy bales and transported to mainland China as material for recycling. After closely observing this cycle, Wulia discovered an ‘unofficial’ trade embedded within the process. Filipino workers (primarily female domestic workers) in Hong Kong would obtain OCC on weekends and use it to construct cardboard houses resembling shelters. Using fieldwork methods, Wulia personally tracked the movement of these cardboard boxes and presented a history of cardboard box migration—rather than ethnic migration—in her video work Proposal for a Film: Within the Leaves, a Sight of the Forest (2016) [p. 72]. The cardboard boxes, constantly moving through the streets of Hong Kong and transforming their appearance and purpose at each stage, almost resemble insects undergoing metamorphosis. In this way, Wulia, grounded by her own origins and experiences of movement, expands the application of the principle of ‘movement’, extending it beyond the movement of humans across various scales and historical timeframes to encompass the movement of insects and objects, creating works that embody the encounters and realisations that such movement makes possible.

If we are to discuss ‘memory’, one of the central themes in Wulia’s work, we must address the Memory is Frail series. The first work in the series, Memory is Frail (and Truth Brittle) (2019) [p. 60], was followed by Memory is Frail (and Truth Falters) (2023) [p. 59]; the third work, Memory is Frail (and Truth Elsewhere) (2024) [p. 45], was created as a new work for this exhibition. This series is an installation composed of charcoal and graphite drawings and text, in which the representation of space (geography) and time (history) are woven together in a looping narrative. The foundational question posed by the series is how our understanding of the world is constructed through sight and recorded through memory. Scattered throughout the work are various images, portraying personal memories and familial memories, as well as the memories of others in the form of films and photographs. The work explores how reality is formed through fragmented memories and how knowledge is constructed through the interpretation of perceived reality, ultimately questioning whether truth is established or rendered ambiguous in this process.

In Memory is Frail (and Truth is Elsewhere), which is based on Wulia’s own childhood memories, the artist compares ants to humans, discussing how humans rely on their sense of sight to guide their actions and how the dominance of sight enables them to understand the world even from a distance. If this work appears slightly different from the previous two in the series, it may be because the QR codes are depicted as drawings rather than concrete images. By scanning these QR codes at the venue, viewers are transported to various websites. Although extensive, the websites covered include the following: ‘withdrawal notices’, which revoke the declassification of a document due to its sensitivity, addressing documents exchanged between the US government and the US Embassy in Indonesia before and after the Indonesian mass killings (1965–68); the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE, Tokyo Trials) (1946); Japanese language education during the Japanese occupation of Singapore (1942–45); Dutch East Indies banknotes issued by the Japanese government during the occupation (1942–45); the Nuremberg Trials (1946–49); the Japanese military conquest and occupation of the western Aleutian Islands (1942); the Allied occupation and reconstruction of Japan (1945–52); the final report of the International People’s Tribunal (IPT) on the 1965 Indonesian mass killings (with the verdict announced in 2016); Indonesian youth undergoing training during the Japanese occupation (1943); and Burmese banknotes issued by the Japanese government during the occupation (1942–45), among others. These websites contain detailed accounts of Japan’s occupation of various

[page 11] 

Asian regions, the country’s invasion of the United States during the Pacific War, and other historical events, which are all presented in a matter-of-fact manner. Audiences are transported back to the time before Hiroshima (ヒロシマ) through the pages displayed on the small screens of smartphones. While most people have no personal memories of that time, by encountering external records of past events that they are unfamiliar with, they can undoubtedly learn something new or reaffirm something that they already know. This experience can also trigger the recollection of individuals memories. The chain of memory stimulation enables a connection to the memories of someone, somewhere.

It seems evident that dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not necessary to achieving the aim of bring a swift end to the war. Similarly, the massacre of communists in Indonesia cannot be justified as a means to create a better national system. Coincidentally, the presence of the great power of the United States is intricately tied to the tragedies that befell both countries. The genocide carried out through the use of nuclear weapons in August 1945 and the Indonesian mass killings, which are said to have started nationwide in October 1965, differ in terms of their time periods, social contexts, and the circumstances in which they occurred. Nevertheless, I propose that we reflect on these events from a humanitarian standpoint, focusing on their shared characteristics. Both were tragedies caused by organised violence perpetrated by human beings; both were clearly influenced by the political power games of major nations; both resulted in the suffering of powerless, innocent, ordinary people; and both continue to evoque deep trauma in individuals and society. How and can we ensure these memories are preserved for future generations without fading into obscurity? Tintin Wulia’s activities and works offer profound insights into addressing this challenge.

Let us once again reflect on the entire exhibition in the gallery. Guided by the intricately layered elements of the works, you will have moved from one piece to another, engaging in a dialogue with each. In doing so, did fragments of your own memories—or perhaps those of others—resurface? As I immerse myself in Wulia’s works, the interplay between memory and movement becomes increasingly evident. Movement generates new memories, which, in turn, inspire further movement. This reciprocal relationship suggests that every experience of movement—or, in a broader sense, the act of ‘moving’—stimulates our senses, thereby reactivating our memories. Through movement, action, observation, investigation, and communication with others, we not only gain new experiences but also inevitably recall past memories, interpreting those memories in new ways that may profoundly alter them. This experience itself becomes a newly recorded memory. Tintin Wulia’s works are etched into people’s memories as instruments that make such interpretations and productions possible.