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Fyerool Darma’s Kitschmensch with many failed flags of 1963 Maphilindo Condeferation (Reworked) is a piece of wearable art modeled on a sleeping bag that recalls the popularity of backpacking in...
Fyerool Darma’s Kitschmensch with many failed flags of 1963 Maphilindo Condeferation (Reworked) is a piece of wearable art modeled on a sleeping bag that recalls the popularity of backpacking in Southeast Asia. The suit is a patchwork of textiles that boast anodyne, touristic imagery of the region. Its aesthetics of kitsch and inauthenticity recuperates the largely forgotten Maphilindo entity, a proposed confederation of Malaysia, Philippines and Indonesia that occurred in the 1960s. The deployment of the signifiers of so-called bad taste and mass culture, from cheap fabrics to flat images to low-budget travel, evokes a peculiarly Southeast Asian visual vernacular, as well as its postcolonial imperatives. The artist invokes the idea of a politics of looking: Kitschmensch and its pictorial components speak to the passive consumption of images today, a shifting stream of visual information bequeathed by contemporary media. The suit is featured in an upcoming film project by Fyerool, shot by Taufiq Rahman, to be titled UHD Azn Junglizt 2030; a selection of still images are included in the current presentation.