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The Sweet and Sour Story of Sugar - An exhibition about globalisation through the former Dutch Sugar Empire

Supartono, working as an associate curator and researcher at Noorderlicht photography was involved in the conception, planning and delivery of the international research project ‘The Sweet and Sour Story of Sugar: Sugar in a Globalised World’, the associated exhibition and accompanying publication. A photographic investigation of the globalisation process through the commodity of sugar in the former Dutch Sugar Empire, this project brings together, historical material and specifically commissioned photographic work to examine the mechanisms of economic and cultural globalisation. Based on unpublished photographic and archival material of Dutch colonial practices in Indonesia, Supartono’s text “Other Pictures: Vernacular (Hi)stories from the Photo Albums of Dutch Industrialists in Colonial Java” examines the ways that the success of the Dutch Empire at the dawn of the twentieth century was celebrated in the photographic albums of Dutch sugar industrialists in Java. This comparative analysis shows how the photographic practices that developed in the colony in parallel with its industrialisation informed the way that the colony was imagined in the metropolis and the colony. Largely understudied in both the Dutch and Indonesian histories of photography, these vernacular photographs problematise anew the post-colonial theorising and ideological premises of ‘colonial’ photography.

Funded by the Mondriaan Stichting, Hivos, Stichting DOEN, SNS REAAL Fonds, and the Dutch Embassy in Indonesia.

The exhibition toured: Indonesia at Langgeng Art Foundation, Jogjakarta: 9 Nov 2012 - 20 Jan 2013 and Ruangrupa, Jakarta: 23 Nov - 14 Dec 2012; Suriname (Fort Zeelandia, Paramaribo: 5 - 14 Jul 2013, Museum Mariënburg, Mariënburg: 17 - 23 Jul 2013, Tembe Art Studio, Moengo: 26 - 28 Jul); Brazil (Museum of Contemporary Art, Sao Paulo, 9 Oct- Nov 2013) and the Netherlands (Noorderlicht Festival, 1 Sept- 13 Oct 2013).

An accompanying publication featuring Supartono’s essay is published by Noorderlicht (ISBN/EAN 978 90 76703 50).