festival
Finn Maätita
BIO
A Moluccan-Dutch artist and researcher, born and raised in the Netherlands, and recently graduated in Photography from the University of the Arts in Utrecht.
Within his current practice he explores the interspaces of his cultural identity. Resulting in multilayered media installations, where drawing, sound, moving image and performance come together.
“While reflecting upon the spaces that overlap within myself, I investigate the interspaces that emerge from these overlaps. Mental and physical interspaces, spaces that are unspoken, or encrypted within the codes that I have to switch between. The collective experience of decolonization and intersectionality motivates me to make myself heard as a Moluccan individual. I remember the way I saw things as a child. Taking on a constant experiment with a language that was imposed by someone else.”
His latest work revolves around the process of revitalization within the colonial system and the importance of ancestral Moluccan principles within that process. He reflects upon a pre-colonial aspect of the contemporary experience of Moluccans in diaspora, to start a conversation about this perspective on the road to decolonization.
Stateless Mind #4
Performance Title
My Name Is The One Who 𓍕
(video) Duration: 20 mins
Many Moluccan family names are carriers of ancestral knowledge and wisdom. This is why the intention and pronunciation of our names and their deeper meanings have been of great importance since ancient times. My surname originates from an endangered language family from the Mother Island of the central Maluku Islands in West Melanesia. Originally, these unwritten languages developed themselves through their natural environment and storytelling, but were suppressed and forbidden with the arrival of colonialism. My Moluccan family name is a space of sound that flattens when written down. This flat written surface has led to ambiguity about the pronunciation. A certain inaccessibility takes over and the depth of the name disappears. The title of this work is a reference to this. The Moluccan symbol cannot be pronounced just like that. Its story has not yet been twisted by an imposed script. My Name Is The One Who 𓍕, shows an act of letting go of the colonially-imposed Latin script, resulting in 're-opening the space of my name'. This act calls upon the viewer's patience and willingness to take time to receive, like our ancestral languages call upon the learners’ willingness to listen in between the lines. More than 300 individuals of the Moluccan diaspora were willing to contribute to this message with their own names. Names that tell stories of encounters between our ancestors and the role of the environment where the names originated. But also, stories of oppression and erasure. Emphasising a sense of collectivity that many Moluccan norms and values are imbued with.
