via KITLV Blog, 25 March 2023: Blog post by Marieke Bloembergen discusses the Singosari temple in East Java and its potential return of colonial loot.
Gelo – ‘disappointing and saddening’, in Javanese – is a good word to describe the feeling that might arise when visiting the thirteenth-century Singosari temple near Malang in East Java. Three of the temple’s four niches are empty, there were three amazing, giant statues representing the goddesses Bharaiva, Ganesa and Durga should be shining in all their glory. The awayness of these statues from Singosari reflects acts of structural injustice, the outcome of which is also visible in the Netherlands. But the more interesting question may be how their absence has mattered there, at Singosari, until today.
