Fyerool Darma
(featuring Efund, tatteredemalion and Exoducks from reddit r/vexxilology)

Artist textiles, thread, wood,
aluminium, and vinyl on wall
Variable Dimensions

Three flags are triumphantly presented in this installation alongside a text that narrates an imagined text message exchange between the fictional character Don Anastacio (from Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere, 1887) and Nyai Ontosoroh (from Ananta Pramoedya’s Bumi Manusia, 1980). Each flag is a different imagination of national representation of Maphilindo that Fyerool found on the internet. Each flag is a “fan art” imagined by an amateur artist with a utopian imagination of this short-lived solidarity between Malaya, the Philippines, and Indonesia, which officially lasted a month in 1963 and fell apart with Indonesian President Sukarno’s policy of Konfrontasi. Konfrontasi (1963–1966) was the stance adopted by Sukarno in relation to his opposition to the formation of the Federation of Malaysia consisting of Singapore, Malaya, Sarawak, and North Borneo (Sabah). This involved an openly hostile take against Malaysia’s independence seeing it as a British neo-colonial ploy. It also consisted of a diplomatic forestalling of the formation of the Federation within the context of Maphilindo negotiations and an unceasing military offensive in the frontier of Northern Borneo and covert military aid to Borneo “freedom fighters.” Maphilindo is generally viewed as an idealistic, failed dream for a pan-Malayan Southeast Asian regionalism. Fyerool critically gestures towards the limitations and lapses of a historical idealism mobilised to address contemporary disenfranchisement. Why does the internet warrior of today wistfully return to this failed dream through the creation of flags and markers of sovereignty? Fyerool’s selection of flags, which he painstakingly sews together to manifest the labouring over of this ideal, speaks to the contemporary resonance and muddling of this history. The seemingly celebratory presentation of the flags ironically asks the question, what do people remember of Maphilindo, and perhaps, the more implicit and important question, why does this contentious history continue to resonate?