Wealth from overseas

On plantations, the enslaved grew their own produce on so-called provision grounds. These grounds were not always fertile; the fertile grounds were for the plantation owner. Maroons – Africans and their descendants who escaped slavery to create their own communities away from the plantation– farmed small plots in the dense, fertile forest of Suriname. These plots were called kostgronden, the same term as used for the provision grounds on plantations. 

In the forest, the maroons planted black rice, cassava, ochre and maize using seeds and cuttings, which they had smuggled, at times in their hair, out of the plantation. Sometimes they traded crops with indigenous communities and with people on plantations, creating a new trade system. These crops enabled the Maroons to survive away from the plantations, almost out of reach of the colonial government. Their vegetable gardens formed the basis for new communities that still exist to this day. 

In 1696 spies working for the VOC succeeded in smuggling coffee plants out of Yemen, which at that time commanded a monopoly on the coffee trade, and introduced them into Indonesia. In the 17th century Europe had become addicted to coffee and the demand was overwhelming. Those few stolen plants multiplied into enormous plantations, and in the 19th century coffee effectively underpinned the entire national economy. Even now Indonesia ranks as one of the top five coffee producers worldwide.

For contemporary Indonesian artist Zico Albaiquni, the botanical garden at Bogor is a spiritual place where past and present come together. In this painting he draws inspiration from a ruwatan, a purification ritual that he asked to be conducted there.  

Both garden and cemetery seen on the right date from colonial times. The sculptures seen on the left refer to the location’s Sundanese and Hindu history. President Soekarno, sitting in the pavilion, symbolises the Indonesian Republic. The artist invites viewers to witness the work’s many layers: implicating them in a purification ritual for this complex history 

This painting shows how Ertsberg in Papua, the biggest copper and gold resource in the world, was destroyed. Artist Maryanto portrays the landscape and the damage caused by the mining industry to raise the issue of the destructive exploitation of the area. He works in so-called gesso style, scratching out white lines on a black ground. It makes the devastated country even more desolate.