Natasha Tontey: The Phantom Combatants
Ateneo Veneto, Venice, 2026

The Phantom Combatants and the Metabolism of Disobedient Organs is a new commission by Natasha Tontey (b. 1989, Minahasa, Indonesia), presented by LAS Art Foundation (Berlin) and Amos Rex (Helsinki) as part of the programme for the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. The exhibition is on view from 9 May to 25 October 2026 at Ateneo Veneto, Venice's academy of science, literature and the arts, housed in a 16th-century building in Campo San Fantin.

Tontey's most ambitious work to date, the multimedia installation reimagines the story of Len Karamoy — a female Minahasan resistance fighter in 1950s Indonesia — through video, sound, light, and biomorphic sculptural forms. Drawing on Minahasan symbolism, B-movie aesthetics, and advanced military imaging technologies, the work explores bodily transformation, cultural sovereignty, and strategies of subversion under conditions of surveillance. Ateneo Veneto's coffered ceiling, depicting Jacopo Palma il Giovane's Cycle of Purgatory (1600), forms an incorporated part of the installation's spatial environment, bathed in a red wash by the artist. The commission marks the first international collaboration between LAS Art Foundation and Amos Rex, and Tontey's first presentation in Italy.