Introducing Kanvas Mutiny: A New Life for the Old Sails of Arka Kinari. 

After moving this ship sixty-thousand nautical miles, stopping in twenty-five nations, from the tropics towards both poles, our ragged sails could no longer hold up to the wind and had to be replaced. But they will instead keep on traveling as massive works of visual art. 

The six sails will be painted by artists from each of the six continents that the ship has visited, in a process that brings artists onto the sea and into collaboration with coastal peoples. The completed works can tour and exhibit independently from Arka Kinari’s voyage, reaching lands, contexts and spaces beyond the range of the mothership.

With an emphasis on bringing the artists onboard as resident sailors, Kanvas Mutiny intertwines artists with the ship’s crew and coastal peoples of Arka Kinari’s Indonesian home waters.

The first sail is already in the bag, Swoon just returned to New York City after a residency onboard Arka Kinari. At sea she was part of our ship crew, in port we were part of the painting crew. Local volunteers also joined in the process, all of us working before the eyes of a rotating crowd of onlookers in towns along the north coast of Flores.

Artist: Swoon

Curators: Grey Filastine, Nova Ruth

It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more.

Crafted in Poland during the Solidarność revolution and first installed on the ship in 1990, the sails saw thirty years of use, including an Arctic voyage, before coming into the hands of Filastine & Nova. They’ve since carried Arka Kinari through the North Sea, Atlantic, Caribbean, Pacific, three years of Indonesian voyages, and all the way down to the Antarctic winds of Tasmania, stopping in twenty- five nations, surviving squalls, cyclones and six months of statelessness during the pandemic.
In this long journey the sails have seasoned from unblemished white to a tea-stained color,
and also show their age through the dozens of hand-stitched patches of emergency repairs.

Through Kanvas Mutiny the sails will not only continue to travel the world, but also have their own voice, raising awareness of threatened seas and coastal communities, deepening our kinship with the ocean’s human and more-than-human life, and remaining as artifacts to outlast the ship and her crew.

The completed pieces may exhibit singly or as an ensemble, and may be transported with the ship or independently as six folding canvases weighing under twenty kilograms per sail.

• New York based Swoon travelled to Indonesia in 2024 and collaborated to paint our largest sail.

• Requires rigging indoors and engineering sign off for outdoors.

• Dimensions: 14.5m x 15m x 5m

• Yet to be exhibited by gallery

• Not represented by gallery

• Link to dossier.

• Link to full video of production

Kanvas Mutiny has been made possible through support from Kindle.

Juxtapoz Magazine (Swoon article)

Swoon Portfolio

Promotional Image Pack

Promotional Video

• Requires rigging indoors and engineering sign off for outdoors.

• Dimensions: 14.5m x 15m x 5m

• Link to dossier.

As with all Arka Kinari presentations we request exhibitors choose wisely with material usage for presenting our work, test alternate options and use us as an excuse to implement and try ideas that are less intensive on the earth.

We also ask that you encourage audiences and visitors to the exhibition to use public transport to access, or to car pool if motor vehicles are required.