Mo Ganji: Celebes Crested Macaque | Celebes-Schopfmakak | Macaca nigra | No. 052/250 from work group 8/99

Celebes Crested Macaque | Celebes-Schopfmakak | Macaca nigra

Mo Ganji’s single line approaches the Celebes crested macaque — a highly social Old World monkey with its characteristic dark face and upright crest — as a gesture that distills presence into its simplest form. The continuous line offers only a minimal contour, enough to hint at a being without fixing it to the concept of “macaque.” In Ganji’s practice, essence becomes visible where detail and categorisation fall away, allowing the viewer to meet the form before naming it.

Macaca nigra is listed as Critically Endangered (CR) on the IUCN Red List. Endemic to the island of Sulawesi and a few nearby islands in Indonesia, the species inhabits rainforest ecosystems where it relies on complex social structures and diverse food resources. Over recent decades, populations have declined sharply.

The principal threats include habitat loss from agricultural expansion and deforestation, hunting for bushmeat, and conflict with humans in cultivated areas. Fragmentation of forests isolates groups and undermines social cohesion, making recovery more difficult. As suitable habitat continues to shrink, remaining populations become increasingly vulnerable to disturbance and chance events.

Ganji’s single line describes a brief, unencumbered recognition of the being itself. In this pared-down contour, the macaque appears not as a specimen within a human-defined category, but as a presence with its own integrity. And it subtly reminds us that forgetting our own embeddedness in nature distances us from the lives we affect — though we remain, unavoidably, part of the same fragile continuum.