Arte Moris and Fundação Oriente in Timor-Leste

I spent my time in Dili, the capital city of Timor-Leste, living at the back of an art gallery at Fundação Oriente, a delegation of the Museu do Oriente in Lisbon. It was the perfect place to be for my project and I have never met so many artists and friends in such a short time. After six accommodations in Rio de Janeiro in just six weeks, I was ready to settle somewhere for a whole month and build a stronger community. Throughout January, I primarily went back and forth between the more formal art space at Fundação Oriente and the laid-back free art school, Arte Moris (living art). Each space offers something different to the contemporary Timorese art scene and I found the interplay and interaction between the two spaces intriguing.

The first event I attended at Fundação Oriente was Mehi nia Naroman (The Light from Dreams), a video mapping installation. This was the first-ever video mapping event in Timor-Leste and the result was otherworldly. A former Arte Moris educator and Australian artist, Thomas Whenning, brought all of his old friends from the school to learn a new computer program called Arena. The artists used the program to cover the Fundação Oriente from head to toe with stunning projections accompanied by ambient and experimental live music. After this event, I realized that history is in the making here within the contemporary art scene and I had to pay close attention and learn more.

Before my arrival, I was nervous about spending time in a Portuguese-run foundation in Timor-Leste. I thought that I would have a lot more critiques of the space than I ended up having. On the other hand, the Museu do Oriente, its mothership in Lisbon, still used a lot of colonial language in its exhibitions and had a harder time reaching out to the diasporic community. The director of their delegation in Dili, Mana (sister) Joana, changed the space a lot from her predecessors. Her goal was to center Timorese artists and voices and create programming that could support and further develop the art market in Timor-Leste.

One of Joana’s closest friends and confidants is Maun (brother) Alfeo Sanches Pereira, a first-generation Arte Moris artist who quickly became one of my favorite people to talk to. He really cares about the power of art for social change and we talked a lot about parenthood, community, feminism, and death. I’ve never met anyone during my travels thus far as wise and funny as him and I will carry our conversations with me for the rest of my journey. He taught me that space can also just be a conversation between two people, and without space, I wouldn’t have been able to connect with Alfeo and discuss art and life. He assured me that a lot of what happens in the art scene here is during casual hangouts with friends. If I stayed longer, I would have been able to experience more of that organic nature. Below is a beautiful video that captures the wit and genius behind Alfeo:

Along with Alfeo, Joana is working with one of the most prolific contemporary Timorese artists, Maria Madeira, to create an art club programming at Fundação. The art club’s goal in Joana’s words is to “focus on enhancing technical and artistic professional skills within the cultural industry and increasing the quality and quantity of cultural goods and services produced while forging networks within the international art scene and promoting the work of Timorese artists and their visibility”.

Currently, Maria is living in Australia where she’s been since 2004 working as a diasporic artist and receiving her Ph.D. in visual arts. Maria will return to Timor-Leste soon to develop further arts programming with Joana that focuses on centering women and cultural exchange. When I talked to Maria about her background as an arts educator in Timor Leste we talked a lot about the gender gap and the deep misogyny that is prevalent throughout the country. I was really inspired by her ideas to create more women-centered workshops with the art club to address this issue. At the beginning of Timor-Leste’s independence, Maria also worked at Arte Moris. She taught art history and theory and encouraged the students to develop their own artistic statements. However, she faced a lot of criticism because of her gender and had a tough time getting women to stay enrolled at the school. This is a problem that still exists in Arte Moris today.

At this point, I feel like I could write a dissertation about each space that I experience, but I want to give you some background on Arte Moris because it is where a majority of Timorese artists (musicians, visual artists, actors) start their careers. In 2003, after Timor-Leste’s independence from Indonesia, a Swiss couple Luca and Gaby Gansser noticed many unemployed young people in the streets. They felt that this energy could be transformed into art in order to build community and heal from the recent traumas of the occupation. So they decided to open a free fine arts school at the old National Museum in Comoro. People from around the country flocked to the school to live there and take a wide variety of classes in theater, music, photography, painting, sculpture, and more.

Unfortunately, in 2021 the government decided to evict the Arte Moris space for veterans. During the eviction, many works were destroyed and the future of Arte Moris was bleak. However, once Dr. José Ramos-Horta became president again in 2022, he decided to give the school a new space at the back of his palace. When I talked with the new leader, Evang, he mentioned his desire for a new space since their existence is reliant on just one president and once his term is up their future is uncertain again.

Their new space is 10 times smaller than the original one, but the community is still strong and chief Evang and president Iliwatu continue to house and teach the new generation. Everyone I met at the school was super energetic, bright, and passionate about their work and I have a lot of hope for the future of the only fine arts school in the country. Their continuous existence is crucial for Timorese contemporary arts and youth empowerment. If you want to learn more about the school and different perspectives on its impact on the local community, please check out this mini-documentary below:

The interplay between Fundação and Arte Moris showed me why more “formal” spaces are important for those that come out of Arte Moris (still questioning what even “formal” is exactly, as well as what do I mean by “space”). I guess formal space can be a permanent place to expose your work and engage in debates with people from around the world. I think that Timorese artists could benefit a lot from more spaces like Fundação that exhibit and center Timorese artists. A space run by and for Timorese would be ideal. I hope that it will happen in the coming years because a diversity of space so that artists have the option to choose what path they want to go down is crucial. Whether that is exhibiting in a cafe, gallery, museum, foundation, or even someone’s home, throughout my journey I have been learning about the many ways people can create permanent or regular space that exhibits and discusses contemporary art.

At the end of my month here, I gave a brief presentation about my project and then opened it up for a discussion on the arts in Timor-Leste. My questions about access and the government’s role made many people react strongly and it got very political with answers in Portuguese, English, and Tetun (Timor-Leste’s lingua franca). The main takeaways were that the government doesn’t appreciate artists or know anything about making art (a pretty universal issue across the globe). They steal work from artists to use in their ministries without credit or compensation. The audience also expressed that there is a lack of education around the arts and emphasized why arts education is important for Timorese society. Overall, the Timorese youth are very talented, but there is a lack of appreciation, opportunity, and value in general. People were skeptical of an imagined future contemporary art museum and the focus was less on space and more on the amazing people who make art for the Timorese people and culture.

If I go back one day, which I hope I do, I want to meet and interview more women artists and realize Maria’s dream of more art historians looking at Timor-Leste. I also want to continue to get to know the younger generation at Arte Moris. I have a feeling the school will change a lot in the coming years, but I know for sure it will stick around even after all it’s been through. Até orasida Dili…I miss you very much.

Now, I am headed to Mindelo, Cabo Verde. Mindelo is the cultural capital of Cabo Verde and the birthplace of the worldwide star, Cesária Evora.

Here is a brief outline of my plan for this month. Without a doubt, I am going to prioritize live music during the carnaval season.