| Summary: | When General Suharto stepped down as president of Indonesia after 32 years of authoritarian rule, artist Yuswantoro Adi marked the occasion with an installation. In Anybody Can Be President, the artist presented an oversized 50,000Rp bill painted in photo-realist style with a hole where the portrait of Suharto should be, and other crucial alterations. This re-imagined rupiah bill commemorated a key turning point in Indonesian politics; Suharto's fall from power was intertwined with the fall in value of the rupiah. Moreover, this remediated form of money, together with other examples of re-imagined money from the same period of Indonesian history, reveal the country's emergent political imaginaries as they coalesced during a difficult time, when symbols of authority and authenticity were legitimate targets.
|
|---|