Natasha Tontey
28 mins
Garden Amidst the Flame is a coming of age story where we are guided into the fantasy of a young Minahasan girls in non-linear time structure. The journey began from young protagonist Virsay filling up the night with shaving her eyebrows with her younger sister in an unemotional display of the hypermasculinity of Minahasan culture. Without knowing her younger sister is one of member of the child gang that practises ancient knowledges, she encounters a realm of nowhere with the sudden appearance of a living fossil, the Coelacanth monster, on her bed, a Rooster beast dancing in her room which is beheaded by a child gang, and other fantastical and absurd situations.
Natasha Tontey is an interdisciplinary artist based between Jakarta and Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Her artistic practice predominantly explores the fictional accounts of the history and myths surrounding ‘manufactured fear.’ In her practice, she observes any possibilities of other futures that are projected not from the perspective of major and established institutions, but a subtle and personal struggle of outcast entities and beings.