Installation view, Ten Thousand Suns, 24th Biennale of Sydney 2024, Chau Chak Wing Museum. Photo: David James.
"A tempered but stubborn nationalism haunts the contemporary biennale, appearing most paradigmatically in Venice’s pavilion format. Its seductions are less obvious in the latest edition of the Biennale of Sydney, curated by Cosmin Costinaș and Inti Guerrero, which has sought to decentre North Atlantic discourse through an emphasis on a multiplicity of perspectives (Ten Thousand) unfolding within a shared planetary system (Suns). But, even when placed within the ‘global’ schema of the biennale, nation and nationality are convenient heuristics, appended to names in placards and media releases.
This faith in the nation is mirrored in the undertones of Australian foreign policy lingo over the past three decades—forever anxious to articulate its position in a region it has characterised as an arc of instability, in which Indonesia, under the threat of ‘Balkanisation’, formed an unstable epicentre. But what hegemonies are concealed by a fixation on colonial cartographies, and their potential undoing? How might a close reading of the ‘Indonesian’ representation in Ten Thousand Suns draw attention to the fictive and uneven qualities of the national imaginary, even if the ghost of the nation cannot be exorcised?"
