Riar Rizaldi at Z33

Artist: Riar Rizaldi

Exhibition title: Fossilis

Curated by: Kevin Gallagher

Venue: Z33, House for Contemporary Art, Design & Architecture, Hasselt, Belgium

Date: March 31 – June 16, 2024

Photography: ©Selma Gurbuz / all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Z33, Hasselt

A tropical landscape littered with rusted consumer goods, a “cannibal market” in Indonesia where machines are torn apart and sold for parts. Within Riar Rizaldi’s recent film Fossilis (2023) we encounter scenes that are hard to resolve: are they speculative futures or current affairs?

The live action sets of Rizaldi’s film were built entirely from waste materials, such as a time machine constructed from the shell of a septic tank. What becomes of our waste? Where does it go? In this light, Fossilis becomes a phantasmagoric response to the global production of electronic waste, much of which is, in fact, dumped and buried in Asia.

Within the exhibition, certain sets and props from the film have been restaged. The exhibition begins with a transition point: a mirrored corridor that all viewers must pass through. In the film, the protagonist traverses the same corridor before being transported in the time machine. Is the corridor in Z33 also an opportunity for transformation? By passing through this threshold, do we also become characters in this story of waste and renewal?

The exhibition Fossilis is in collaboration with Jan Van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, NL. The film Fossilis was originally commissioned by Hyundai Artlab for the 5th VH Award.

Riar Rizaldi (1990, Bandung, Indonesia) is based in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. His works have been shown at various international film festivals and art institutions including Whitney Biennial, US (2024); Museum of Modern Art, US (2024); Taipei Biennial, TW (2023); Istanbul Biennial, TK (2023); Centre Pompidou, FR (2021); Biennale Jogja, ID (2021). Recent solo presentations include Centre de la photographie Genève, CH (2023) and Batalha Centro de Cinema Porto, PT (2023).