Val Wens: 99 Anxieties

This exhibition presents a site-specific performance and installation by Jakarta-born, queer artist Val Wens. In the performance, 99 bottles are individually juggled until they break, transforming an ordered arrangement into scattered fragments to examine belief, authority, endurance, failure and vulnerability through the body. The title of the exhibition draws from the Islamic theological concept of Asmaul Husna (‘The Most Beautiful Names’), wherein learning the 99 names of Allah strengthens faith and brings inner peace. 

For Val, the act of balance also refers to the survival of Javanese people in the colonial era under the intense pressure of colonial hegemony. The “juggling and act of balance” is also a contemporary metaphor for the regulation of lineage, and the coercion of religion, culture and sexuality, as experienced by an Indonesian who lives between cultures, Indonesia and Australia.​