The exhibition presents 10 images of endemic Wallacean fauna, each meticulously shaped by microscopic text that forms the lines, shading and contours of the animals. Composed entirely of passages from the Sang Hyang Kamahayanikan, a foundational 10th-century Javanese Mahayana Buddhist text, the images initially appear naturalistic. Only upon closer inspection does it become clear that their forms are made up of sacred passages written in Hanacaraka, the traditional Javanese script.

The title brings together two distinct references. Wallacea evokes Alfred Russel Wallace, the English naturalist who independently developed the theory of evolution by natural selection. Lalitavistara, meanwhile, refers to an ancient Sanskrit Mahayana Buddhist scripture, or sutra, composed around the third and fourth centuries. The text recounts the life of the Buddha and is depicted in the reliefs of Borobudur Temple, presenting a cosmos shaped by karma, spiritual progression and ultimate openness.

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The exhibition’s 10 images draw inspiration from the fauna of Wallacea, a transitional biogeographic zone where Asian and Australian wildlife meet. The region’s distinctive distribution of species was mapped by Wallace in the 19th century. Yet its fauna had been depicted long before the naturalist arrived in Java, including in the stone reliefs of Borobudur, which date to the eighth and ninth centuries.

By embedding sacred scripture into the bodies of endemic animals, Eddy reinterprets them as physical manifestations of a broader spiritual and philosophical universe.

In his signature style, the artist shapes each animal using passages of Old Javanese scripture that form its visual contours. Known for juxtaposing Javanese narratives with Western iconography, Eddy brings the sacred cosmology represented at Borobudur into dialogue with the biogeographic realities associated with the Wallace Line.

Proposed by Wallace in the 19th century, the Wallace Line is a faunal boundary that runs through the Indonesian archipelago, separating predominantly Asian fauna to the west from more Australasian species to the east. It passes between Bali and Lombok in the south and between the islands of Borneo and Sulawesi farther north, extending toward the Philippines.

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