History Class (Indonesia)

History class (Indonesia), (2016-2020) features desks engraved with incidents from 1965–66 Indonesia. Intended as a participative installation that allows audiences to create rubbings that can be taken home, the work expands from Kunavichayanont’s original installation of events surrounding the Thai student massacre in 1965. The Indonesian version serves a similar purpose in recollecting tragic events and offering a re-evaluation of accounts from the winning side’s perspective. The images reflect the Indonesian state’s mass killings of more than half a million people, done in the name of purging the threat posed by the Communist Party of Indonesia but also targeting ethnic Chinese, Muslim minorities, and labour unions.  As the true scale of these killings have yet to be incorporated into the official histories taught in schools, the work stands as a challenge to audiences to confront the political and social implications surfaced by this historical whitewashing.