A roundabout: Blooming mementos, towards monuments

The 1955 Asian-African Conference (Bandung Conference) is a deeply rooted myth, planted in fertile ground. Yet without critical thought and conscious effort, it risks becoming mere nostalgia—draped in the language of revolution, internationalism, and solidarity, those grand blockbuster keywords we all strive to achieve anyway. Proudly claimed and remembered as the first gathering of a third of the world’s population, it remains striking that no official group photograph of all the delegates in the main conference hall has ever surfaced—as if an official evidence of their togetherness was never a necessity.

Amid countless candid photographs capturing delegates in moments of camaraderie, floral arrangements appear time and again, quietly bearing witness to the spectacle. One particularly curious image lingers: a pillar, crowned with an elaborate floral display, standing on a plinth that mimics the hall’s architecture. Someone—or perhaps an entire department—must have carefully planned and placed these flowers. But who? Why? And for what purpose? As these questions haunt us, history keeps moving, unavoidably taking us along.

Suspicious of round tables, uneasy in roundabouts, wary of mainstream narratives and ideological gimmicks, this showcase offers a pause—a moment to slow down and reconsider our surroundings, through what remains, what has been exaggerated or erased, and what is yet to come. Like flowers dulled by passing traffic or statues standing silently, holding more knowledge than any passerby, we revisit histories that bloomed or were uprooted, cemented into place or violently erased. On this side of the planet, it was never cold to begin with…

Exhibition

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Publication

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