Introducing Kanvas Mutiny

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.

The second sail, by an Asian artist, will be completed in September along the coast of Java.