Locations visited with Pieth:
- Birth House Eugéne Dubois, Breusterstraat, Eijsden (NL)
- Museum het Ursulineconvent, Eijsden (NL)
- Teylers Museum Haarlem (NL)
- Natural Biodiversity Center Leiden (NL)
- ENCI Maastricht (NL)
- Cemetery Venlo (NL)
09. The Giant Bones (2024-27)
Location: The Netherlands and Java, Indonesia
Sculpture, performative intervention, analogue photography, audio installation (forthcoming)
Commissioned by Odapark Venray (NL)
Generously funded by the Mondriaan Fonds
The Giant Bones builds on DTA’s earlier project Swamp Palace (2022), which explored the botanical work of paleoanthropologist Eugène Dubois (1858-1940) in North Limburg. This new project turns to another chapter of his legacy: the fossil discoveries he made in the former Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia, that brought him international recognition and continue to raise urgent questions about colonial history and restitution.
In 2022, the Indonesian government announced its claim for the return of some 40,000 fossils, including the world-famous remains of Java Man, once described as the “missing link” between apes and humans. Discovered by Dubois in Java in the late nineteenth century, these fossils had symbolic meaning for the local community, who believed that they were the remains of a mythical battle between giants. Dubois took the ‘giant bones’ with him and shipped them to the Netherlands in approximately four hundred crates. Today, they form part of a collection held by Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, one of the largest collections of Indonesian fossils in the world.
Location: The Netherlands and Java, Indonesia
Sculpture, performative intervention, analogue photography, audio installation (forthcoming)
Commissioned by Odapark Venray (NL)
Generously funded by the Mondriaan Fonds
The Giant Bones builds on DTA’s earlier project Swamp Palace (2022), which explored the botanical work of paleoanthropologist Eugène Dubois (1858-1940) in North Limburg. This new project turns to another chapter of his legacy: the fossil discoveries he made in the former Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia, that brought him international recognition and continue to raise urgent questions about colonial history and restitution.
In 2022, the Indonesian government announced its claim for the return of some 40,000 fossils, including the world-famous remains of Java Man, once described as the “missing link” between apes and humans. Discovered by Dubois in Java in the late nineteenth century, these fossils had symbolic meaning for the local community, who believed that they were the remains of a mythical battle between giants. Dubois took the ‘giant bones’ with him and shipped them to the Netherlands in approximately four hundred crates. Today, they form part of a collection held by Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, one of the largest collections of Indonesian fossils in the world.
As discussions about repatriation take shape in the Netherlands, fundamental questions remain open. What does the return of these fossils mean for Indonesia and the Netherlands? Who has the right to care for, study, interpret, and tell the stories of these remains? And how might a colonial scientific legacy be reconsidered in the present? While an advisory committee in The Hague addressed questions of restitution and has started returning fossils to Indonesia, our art project seeks to bring these questions into the public realm, creating space for perspectives that extend beyond the museum and the academic world.
At the heart of The Giant Bones is a replica of a prehistoric human reconstruction made by Dubois in 1900. He named the figure Pieth and used it during the World Exhibition in Paris to present his scientific ideas to the public. Rather than treating the sculpture as a museum object, DTA reimagines it again as a catalyst for conversation: a figure through which people can encounter the past, question inherited narratives, and reflect on the possible return of the fossils. By bringing Pieth into public spaces, the project places Dubois’s legacy in the midst of contemporary society, inviting a range of voices into a debate that concerns us all.
Following an initial journey through the Netherlands where we trace Dubois’ own history, Pieth is intended to travel to Java. There, the project will open up conversations with people in Indonesia about the fossils, their histories, and the meaning of their return.
The voices gathered along the way will come together in an audio installation, premiering at Odapark in 2027.