Natasha Tontey's new installation "The Phantom Combatants" at the Ateneo Veneto in Venice reimagines the story of Len Karamoy, a woman who was part of the CIA-funded Permesta resistance movement in North Sulawesi, Indonesia (1957-1961). The 22-minute film, commissioned by the LAS foundation and Amos Rex, features absurdly muscular mutant warriors and draws on Indigenous belief systems, video games, Indonesian soap operas, and B-movie aesthetics to explore themes of autonomy, resistance, and historical perspective.
The work matters because it challenges dominant historical narratives by centering a overlooked female figure and interrogating tensions within Indonesian history and culture, particularly the imposition of hyper-masculine ideas on the Minahasan Indigenous group. As the third installment in Tontey's "Macho Mystic Meltdown" series, it demonstrates how contemporary art can use camp and fantasy to address serious themes of colonialism, gender, and power, while also highlighting the importance of Indigenous perspectives in global contemporary art discourse.