AMÚN MBES’ REENACTMENT

Roy Villevoye

Roy Villevoye is a ‘relational’ artist whose fascination for complexity means he often finds himself swimming against the tide. His 2017 lifelike sculpture Amún Mbes’ Reenactment is a case in point. For many Papuans the Dutch flag has a paradoxical meaning, and this affected how the work was received. Whereas ‘westerners’ might tend to interpret the flag in the context of the Netherlands as a colonial power, for many Papuans it represents a much bigger history. Nudity, which was banned by law by Indonesians in 1976, also underlines their independence. During the opening of the 2017-2018 exhibition Power and Other Things (Indonesia & Art) at Bozar, Brussels, an Indonesian ambassador tried to get this work removed. The controversy surrounding the work has continued unabated since it was acquired by the Van Abbemuseum, and there’s no end in sight. We have chosen to present this work to create space for complexity in our world, precisely because it raises questions.

Collectie Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven.

Roy Villevoye

― Kunstenaar

Roy Villevoye (1960, Maastricht) studied at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam, where he also currently works as an advisor. In the late 1980s he was assistant to Sol LeWitt. After a succesful career as a painter in that period, he started following a new artistic course. Especially since 1992 when he began to travel frequently outside Europe, mostly to Papua, the former Dutch New Guinea. From then on his regular stays with the Asmat people inspired him to create a variety of works – first paintings, gradually also photographs and works in other media – about colour, cultural codification and identity. His work has gradually developed as a testimony of -sometimes uncomfortable- encounters and dialogue between two asynchronous cultures, beyond the simplified scheme of progress, the primitive and the mythical and the conventional assessment of values and manners. It reflects the interdependence and complexity of these interactions. This is also a motive in a number of the films he has been making since 1998, often in collaboration with Jan Dietvorst. He works in Amsterdam.

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