Art and Design Commons^™

'We Cannot Heal What We Will Not Face': Dismantling The Cultural Trauma And The May '98 Riots In Rani P Collaborations' Chinese Whispers, Alberta Natasia Adji, Marcella Polain

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

In May 1998, ethnic riots and widespread sexual violence occurred in several major Indonesian cities. Chinese-Indonesians were targeted and, since then, there has been an interest in feminist visual art created by Chinese-Indonesian diaspora in Australia. This article explores Chinese Whispers, a digital graphic novel by Rani Pramesti, a Chinese-Javanese-Indonesian actor and Melbourne-based performance maker, and her team of Indonesian-Australian collaborators. Applying solemn imagery, it narrates a young woman’s attempts at understanding cultural trauma that has marked both personal and public identities of Chinese-Indonesians. Imbued with black-and-white illustrations and interview transcripts, the digital graphic novel tries to answer questions …