The installation ‘Hi Inlander’ marks the moment I started working with cloaks. I connected ideas related to the fragility of modern multi-racial societies with the motivations of the racial riots in Indonesia in 1998, which, until today, continue to cause problems between different ethnic communities in the country. The first veil or cloak was made from frog’s leg skins that I processed into leather. The work was worn during exhibitions in Bandung and Yogyakarta. I had used frog’s legs and skins before, for instance in the street performance ‘Pribumi-Pribumi’, to question the different roles animals play in human culture. While Chinese people eat frog legs as a delicacy, Muslims consider them unclean (haram). The food thus reveals different cultural perceptions.
For the exhibition at the Queensland Art Gallery (Brisbane, Australia), part of the third Asia Pacific Triennial, I presented three other cloaks, made of chicken feet, kangaroo skins and fish skins. The different animal skin cloaks were worn during the opening by people from different ethnic origins and with different skin colours: a Sri Lankan, an Aboriginal, a Japanese and a white Australian. I also designed three kitchen tables and offered the meat of these four animals with a variety of spices to the visitors of the exhibition.The idea behind this happening was that sharing food together opens up possibilities for understanding between cultures, while stimulating conversation.