Voyage Trokomod
Conceived by Heri Dono, one of Indonesia’s leading contemporary artists, Voyage-Trokomod fuses the image of the deceitful Trojan horse with that of Indonesia’s Komodo dragon. Frightfully fanciful, the massive site-specific work is the nation’s answer to Okwui’s Enwezor’s challenging Biennale theme: “All the World’s Futures.”

Rising out of the depths of history, the creature is the artist’s vehicle of exploration, through which he examines the state of the world, as well as his country’s position and his own. Bristling with canon-like telescopes, and accompanied by an armada of angel-like “Perahu Arwah (Spirit Boats),” the “Trokomod” possesses distinctive powers to disrupt our consciousness.

Filled with photos, illustrations and texts by distinguished authors, the book Voyage-Trokomod takes readers on a new voyage of discovery. Watch Heri Dono at work, as he reflects on influences on his own art-wayang (Javanese puppet theater) and comics like Flash Gordon, which took him to the moon, long before man landed there. Peer through telescopes, enter the belly of the beast, and see the past and future from another perspective. As Dono says: “Depending on where one stands my East could be someone’s West.”