In September 2025, a West Papuan art collective called Udeido was invited to the contemporary art studio Framer Framed in Amsterdam for an exhibition titled Lawan! In the same studio, Udeido Collective shared a space with Watch 65. They were showing visual art and cultural archives to document past and ongoing oppression experienced by the Indonesian and West Papuan peoples.
At the Framer Framed studie, the Udeido Collective, represented by Dicky Takndare, Michael Yan Devis, Costantinus Raharusun, Yanto Gombo, Albertho Wanma, and S.Y. Glenn Miteboga, together with a Dutch artist, Kevin van Braak, created seven mask installations representing contemporary issues experienced by West Papuans with the title, Hidden Faces of Papua. The masks express how the problems in Papua are isolated and neglected, especially the erasure of identity, where systemic power tends not just to appropriate but to change them into a new identity.
Seven masks represent the seven different issues in Papua. Starting from the misrepresentation of West Papuan identity (Bekaku Ba); how the national education system oppress the intellectual knowledge and culture in Papua with non-Papuan perspective curriculum (Tewed), marginalization caused by transmigration (Toboo); the disconnection between elders and youth because of the systematic erasure of identity (Karwar); extractive activities happening in Papua (Nemangkawi Holes); gross human rights violations and freedom of expression (KUG); and how the system silenced the population since the beginning (Bihm). At the opening of the exhibition, Glenn – one of the members of the Udeido Collective – performed a monologue in the indigenous language of Biak. In this monologue, he called the ancestors to be present, He also did a general call for to everyone who knows about West Papua but does not pay much attention to the human rights violations, especially to the people in the Netherlands who, at one time, called West Papua, Dutch New Guinea (Nederlands Nieuw Guinea).
Udeido Collective is known as a collective that consistently talks about ongoing issues experienced in Papua through their art in every opportunity they get. Additionally, they were also involved in a project to advocate for indigenous West Papuan rights in response to land-grabbing cases in West Papua. Supporting the campaign ‘West Papua is not an empty land’, most of their artworks depict the broken system caused by colonialism and also show that people have lived in West Papua from generation to generation.
The invitation by Framer Framed and the collaboration with Kevin van Braak on this occasion is another opportunity for them to advocate for what is happening at home. In Papua, spaces to talk about the ongoing oppression are faced with intimidation from the military. The people have limited freedom of expression. When there are spaces to talk about the issues, filled with different interests, it creates a represented illusion of the real situation. The joint exhibition in Amsterdam aimed to show that realities are not only shaped by the government, but also by people who advocate for protecting their land.
In the corner of the Framer Framed studio, Udeido, as part of Merauke Solidarity, provided a space for voices from Merauke, South Papua Province. In this province, there is ongoing large-scale deforestation in the name of national development, where the government wants to change indigenous land and forests into new rice fields and sugarcane plantations covering more than 2 million hectares. The collective was involved in the Merauke conference in March 2025 to create artworks called Voices, which provide spaces for victims of the project to share how they feel through drawings and letters. Through their presence in the Netherlands, the Udeido Collective, strived to build broader solidarity to press the government to re-evaluate the ongoing projects.
“As a West Papuan, I believe it is very important for us to fill or create ‘spaces’ like this. Spaces where Papuans can speak about their land and community without any illusions of representation. This also made me realize that our presence as the artists is very important, at least based on what we hear and feel from the Papuan diasporan in the Netherlands towards us, that there are other things we can discover and touch upon through art.” - said Michael Yan Devis (the creator of the Bekaku Ba mask).
Article written by Dorthea Wabiser (DEFE)
This exhibition was made possible thanks to financial support from the Haëlla Stichting, V Fonds and the Cirrus Foundation.
