MUMA Film: Natasha Tontey Shorts

Natasha Tontey is a Minahasan artist based in between Yogyakarta and Jakarta. Her artistic practice predominantly explores the fictional accounts of the history and myths surrounding ‘manufactured fear.’ Through her work she observes any possibilities of other futures that are projected not from the perspective of major and established institutions, but a subtle and personal struggle of the outcasted entities and beings. Her fascination with speculative fiction finds expression in experimental video works and performances.

Her recent exhibitions include the solo show Primate Visions: Macaque Macabre (2024), commissioned by Audemars Piguet Contemporary at Museum MACAN, Jakarta, and Garden Amidst the Flame (2022) at Auto Italia, London. Selected group exhibitions and screenings include presentations at 14ª Bienal do Mercosul, Porto Allegre, Brasil (2025); the 34th and 32nd Singapore International Film Festival (2021, 2023) ; the 57th and 58th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (2023, 2024); the Singapore Biennale (2023); KANAL-Centre Pompidou, Brussels (2023); De Stroom, The Hague (2022); GHOST:2565, Bangkok (2022); Protozone8 Queer Trust, Zürich (2022); Arko Art Council, Seoul (2022); Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul (2022); Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (2021); transmediale, Berlin (2021); Performance Space, Sydney (2021); Other Futures, Amsterdam (2021); Kyoto Experiment (2021); and the Asian Film Archive, Singapore (2021).

Kristi is an arts leader and cultural strategist with more than 20 years' experience shaping experimental and cross-cultural artistic practice.

Kristi's career has been defined by long-term collaboration and a commitment to supporting grassroots initiatives, mentoring emerging artists and championing Global Majority and Diaspora voices. Having lived and worked in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, immersed in its vibrant arts scene and deeply community-rooted creative culture, she brings a grounded, first-hand understanding of artistic practice outside Western frameworks. Those years shaped her thinking about what it means to build arts ecosystems that are genuinely self-determined, locally embedded and internationally connected.

As a Javanese-Australian who spent her formative years living across Southeast Asia, Kristi developed an early and intimate familiarity with cultural multiplicity, navigating between languages, traditions and ways of creating meaning that resist easy categorisation. This lived experience sits at the heart of her practice and continues to inform how she approaches collaboration, community and creative possibility.

She is passionate about fostering cultural diversity, nurturing self-determined artistic communities and expanding the narratives that define Australia's contemporary cultural landscape, bringing to that work not just professional expertise, but a life shaped by crossing borders, both geographic and cultural.