Eternal Damn Nation casts the net over the Sisyphean enterprise of national progress. This three-part exhibition of the Anting-Anting group magnifies the overall betrayal of a nation promised a history of things - freedom (Heaven), land (Earth) - and ending up with a struggle against being condemned to an actual history of unfulfilled promises (Hell).
It is therefore timely that Eternal Damn Nation, coincides with the 2010 elections. Where else is the focal point of issues of nationhood and societal change but in the body governing a nation? In the masquerade of popular jingles, solipsistic debates and black propaganda, hell is another false miracle inclined to backfire on its believers, hell is not knowing where the country's new leaders will direct the course of history. And with Eternal Damn Nation, Anting-Anting echoes many others who are hell bent on steering the nation off the hell-bound path.
Grim as the themes of the works could be, they do not necessarily point to an end of the world. Instead they speak of the suffering and punishment present in our locus, as if "hell is empty and all the devils are here". The works of Anting-Anting are mostly directly referent, given that they are portraying a visual landscape of the times. They work with obvious metaphors in order to drive straight into the heart of power relationships inherent in electorial politics. Symbols of personal weaknesses and suffering are summed up to make connections to agencies of power, which are portrayed directly (portraits of national leaders, heroes and government offices).
This form of political action transforms personal problems into political problems. And this particular collective, Anting-Anting, provides a key to test political theory. This three-part exhibition that culminates in Eternal Damn Nation (both the exhibition and the collaborative mural) is Anting-Anting's political struggle. Hell bent on questioning why the nation is burning in fires tended by itself, Anting-Anting continues to stress for a collective solution that would put an end to a chaos akin to the self-regenerative Lernaean Hydra.
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