Voice-Over

Set in the Asmat region in the Indonesian part of New Guinea, Voice-Over overlays the construction of a traditional wooden sculpture with a phone call about a sales deal gone wrong. The death of Roy Villevoye’s Papuan friend Omoma is the reason for the creation of the sculpture, a ritual that also functions as a memorial ceremony. In the phone call with a gallery owner, reference is also made to a sculpture, in this case an artpiece and (expensive) commodity. The result is a painful confrontation between two worlds with “the sculpture” as the transgressive symbol of life, death, and legacy on the one hand, and the art market on the other.