Syncretic Wilds

MUMA brings the work of Phasmahammer and Natasha Tontey into conversation to rethink history and myth, generate speculative fictions and centre the storytelling of Southeast Asia.

Phasmahammer and Natasha Tontey operate in posthuman paradigms, crafting highly immersive films and installations that offer alternative ways of remembering, relating and world-building. The exhibition reflects on global Indigenous histories, bringing together two distinctive strategies of resistance across the Indo-Pacific region through visual art.

United by a playful intermingling of futurism and ancestral cosmologies, Phasmerhammer and Tontey both employ storytelling to propose new imaginaries for living in difficult times. They share a belief in the restorative possibilities of collective art-making with Phasmerhammer framing performance as a form of ceremony and communal healing, and Tontey embracing collaborative traditions of Minahasan culture as a mode of reconnecting to the natural world.

As an exhibition grounded in performance, installation and embodied experience, Syncretic Wilds continues MUMA’s ongoing research into performance within the museum, developed through the ARC-funded project Precarious Movements: Choreography and the Museum (2020–24) and subsequent exhibitions and public programs at MUMA.