20 Mar

Finn Maätita & Jerrold Saija | Tones of the Ecotone

Finn Maätita, participant of Planetary Poetics, and Jerrold Saija, alum ofEcologies of Transformation, invite you to the opening of their collaborative exhibition Tones of the Ecotone on Thursday, 20 March. The exhibition will be opened with a live performance by tifa group Keku Tiha and a Q&A between guest curator Zippora Elders Tahalele and the artists. You are welcome at Foam from 17.30 to 21.00 hrs for this official event with free museum admission.

RSVP link: https://form.jotform.com/250623770634355

Foam 3h presents Tones of the Ecotone, a collaborative exhibition by Finn Maätita (NL, 1998) and Jerrold Saija (NL, 1996). The exhibition honors the ‘ecotone’ – the transition zone between two ecosystems, such as between land and water – and connects this with the artists’ Moluccan roots and the diaspora. The central focus is on the sago palm, the basis of the staple diet on the Moluccas, as a symbol of ecological and physical omnipresence.

Maätita and Saija give thought to the experience of the Moluccan body as an extension of the Moluccan landscape, emphasising the intersection of ecology, ancestral knowledge, and physicality. In this way, a new ‘shelter’ comes into being: a space of warmth, harmony and possibilities for the future. Combining ancient wisdom, photography, assemblage, and media technologies, the artists give shape to the deep connection between humans, nature and ancestral knowledge. In the exhibition, images and sounds merge: the heartbeat of the artists, the rhythmic tones of the Moluccan tifa, the pounding of sago palm into sago flour, the preparation of papeda, the sound guidance of gaba-gaba sticks and the melodies of the suling gaba. The exhibition itself becomes a living ecotone, a meeting place for the Moluccan diaspora, where generations, knowledge and media merge into a new ecological whole.