Novia D. Rulistia, The Jakarta Post, Tue, December 03 2013, 12:09 PM
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2013/12/03/an-astronaut-czech-artists-yali-mek-papua.html
Czech photographer and painter Barbora Šlapetová and sculptor Lukáš Rittstein have captured the slow shift toward “modernization” for the Yali Mek through photos, sculpture and by even introducing an astronaut to the tribe, which lives in a remote part of Papua.
The journey of Šlapetová and Rittstein started when the couple decided to fulfill a childhood dream to travel the world after living under a communist regime.
“Because our borders were closed by the communists during our younger times, we dreamed of going as far as we could; not only over land, but traveling through culture and time,” Šlapetová said. “So that’s why we wanted to go to as far as a ‘stone age’ time.”
Their choice took them to Papua. “From the visual information we had gathered, we wanted to see the reality. And we fell in love with it since the first time we entered the land,” Šlapetová said during a recent visit to Jakarta.
Šlapetová and Rittstein first came to Papua in 1997, traveling through the province to look for tribes that could show how people “from the stone age” could live today.