#Titarubi Imago Mundi 2013. 24k Gold-plated Nutmegs, gold leaves on book, burnt wood, stainless steel and globe. 213 x 101 x 80cm. In the 16th and 17th centuries, nutmeg was the most desired luxury good in Europe more valuable than gold. The English and the Dutch engaged in prolonged battles to gain control of the nutmeg industry Jan Pieterszoon Coen, then newly-appointed Governor-General of the Dutch East Inda Company, waged a bloody war to enforce Dutch monopoly over the Banda lslands (a group of ten small volcanic islands in the Indonesian province of Maluku) spice trade, including the massacre and enslavement of the inhabitants in 1621. Most historians believe that the population of the islands was around 15,000 before 1621 but the Dutch brutally massacred all but about 1,000 of them Thereafter, the Banda Islands were run as a series of plantation estates with imported slaves from Java and other Indonesian islands. The price of nutmeg was kept artificially high by the Dutch as they voluntarily burnt warehouses full of nutmegs in Amsterdam. In Imago Mundi, Titarubi has produced a monumental sculpture referencing a dark history of Indonesia. A precious commodity with a torturous history lies suspended in the large robe that Titarubi and her team of workers have painstakingly produced entirely from metal and gold-plated nutmegs.
Posted on: Sun, 25 Jan 2015 10:38:54 +0000
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