Timoteus Anggawan Kusno

In the 19th century the Sultan of Yogyakarta presided over Rampokan, a ritual in which a tiger was caught and slaughtered to impress visiting dignitaries. Kusno is interested in the murder of tigers as a demonstration of masculinity and virility in Java. This work also references the black market for Indonesian tiger pelts. The trade was outlawed in the 1990s but Sumatran tiger pelts are still being illegally traded. Today there are less than 400 Sumatran tigers left in the wild. Javanese and Balinese Tigers were declared extinct in 2008 and 2013 respectively.

Timoteus Anggawan Kusno is a multi-disciplinary artist, researcher and filmmaker who presents his works through installations, drawings, moving images and institutional projects. He navigates the boundary between fiction and history, imagination and memory, and addresses the lasting effects of colonialism and power through his narratives.

Kusno’s work has been presented internationally at major cultural institutions including Tate Modern (London), the Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam), the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Seoul), MoCA Taipei, Fundació Joan Miró (Barcelona), Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, ILHAM Gallery (Kuala Lumpur), Inside-Out Art Museum (Beijing), BOZAR (Brussels), the Mumbai City Museum, Kunstmuseum Bonn, the Gwangju Biennale, Sharjah Art Foundation and Biennale Equator, among others.