Hela Hela Arumbai
Ribka M. Pattinama Coleman, in collaboration with Jerrold Saija and Finn Maätita.
Inspired by the Moluccan song Hela Hela Arumbai, which calls for collective action through the raising of sails, the project reflects on the complex history of The Maluku Islands, the locus of the world’s spice routes, which have endured colonial pillaging and genocide for centuries. Working in a collaborative way, Ribka, Jerrold, and Finn present a work that demonstrates how Moluccan stories persist and endure, carried across seas and generations.
These elided histories are presented in Afgang in a reimagined Baileo – a house for gathering and conflict-resolution common in Moluccan villages. This structure is created by hanging Lenso fabrics to create a space for storytelling. The Lensoes are ornamented with 1:1 scale aluminium castings of nutmeg and clove, the invaluable spices native to the Maluku Islands.
Working with craftsmen from Bali, Indonesia, the artists use traditional techniques to dye Lensoes with mangrove and indigo, stand-ins for cloves and nutmeg. This substitution speaks to loss and adaptation, echoing the Moluccan people’s ongoing resilience and navigation of continued destruction.
The hand-printed motifs on the fabrics illustrate an expansive repository of sketches, texts, and research into trade routes, extraction histories, and ancestral knowledges that the collective has been accumulating for years. One particular motif lists all the names of the mountains in central Maluku that the artists read about or heard through legends. On the fabric we read the words:
“Our ancestors knew these mountains.
Our ancestors met each other here.
Our ancestors fought each other here.
Our ancestors loved each other here.”
