In Venice, Italy, Indonesian artist Natasha Tontey has resurrected an oft-forgotten female guerrilla fighter from the Indonesian island of Sulawesi and moved her – and her band of girl muscle – into a four-century-old building that was once used for providing spiritual support to those sentenced to death by hanging.
The message to 17th century visitors entering what is now the Ateneo Veneto cultural institute was that there was only one way to free the souls of the dead in purgatory: by buying the church’s goodwill. That message was clear to all who could see Jacopo Palma il Giovane’s Cycle of Purgatory (1600) paintings covering the great hall’s ceiling.
