Natasha Tontey: The Phantom Combatants

“The Phantom Combatants and the Metabolism of Disobedient Organs” is a major commission by Natasha Tontey, presented by LAS Art Foundation and Amos Rex. Located in the sixteenth-century Ateneo Veneto, the installation comprises video, sound, light, and sculpture. The work reimagines the history of Len Karamoy, a combatant in the Permesta movement in North Sulawesi (1957–1961). In Tontey’s retelling, Karamoy is a mythic presence multiplied into a chorus of young troops. Her “mutant body” serves as an emblem of self-determination, with “disobedient organs” metabolising ancestral forces.

The narrative explores indigenous Minahasan identity, blending Christian and animist beliefs. The installation interacts with Jacopo Palma il Giovane’s 1600 ceiling painting, “Cycle of Purgatory”, which Tontey illuminates in a red wash to reflect political and spiritual liminality. The work employs a “campy” B-movie aesthetic, combining DIY effects with advanced technologies such as quantum ghost imaging, LiDAR, 3-D photogrammetry, and thermal cameras. These tools invoke the militarised mapping of bodies and territories. As the third instalment in the “Macho Mystic Meltdown” series, the exhibition centres feminist and indigenous perspectives to rethink resistance and sovereignty. Through minor histories and cosmological knowledge, Tontey proposes a technological future rooted in alternative, non-human perspectives.