Abstract
This paper examines how decolonization materializes through museum representations in Medan, Indonesia, by analysing two contrasting case studies: the Tjong A Fie Museum and the Indonesian Plantation Museum. Both occupy former colonial spaces in the historic district of Kesawan and represent bottom-up efforts to reclaim narratives omitted or suppressed in official Indonesian heritage discourse. The Tjong A Fie Museum, established by descendants of one of Medan’s most prominent Chinese-Indonesian figures, reintroduces the long-marginalized history and cultural traditions of the Chinese diaspora into the city’s public memory. In contrast, the Indonesian Plantation Museum, situated in the colonial-era rubber plantation headquarters, reawakens Medan’s forgotten plantation past by transforming a site of exploitation into a space of reflection. Yet, both museums reveal the unfinished nature of decolonization: while they reopen silenced histories, they remain constrained by sanitized narratives that avoid addressing state violence, colonial oppression, and ethnic discrimination. By situating these museums within broader debates on heritage politics and the efforts toward decolonizing the museum, this paper argues that such institutions enact a form of decolonial re-emergence, where new voices and memories re-enter public space even within limiting frameworks. These museums embody Indonesia’s on-going negotiation between remembering and forgetting, between the aesthetic celebration of multicultural harmony and the deeper reckoning with colonial and post-colonial violence. As such, they offer crucial insights into how inclusive museums in post-authoritarian contexts can both challenge and reproduce existing hierarchies of knowledge and representation.
Presenters
Joshua GebertResearch Fellow, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Decolonization, Museums and Memory, Indonesia, Heritage Politics, Marginalized Histories
