The year 2020 and during this covid 19 pandemic, requires me to experiment again and make changes in my working methods. My interest in participatory methods in creating works was immediately hampered by the suggestion to maintain physical distance, which then resulted in the loss of the essence of direct experience and the performativeness between the artist and the participants. Studio-based work methods then become the most reasonable choice these days. In this series of works, I collect old photos from thrift or antique places around the city of Yogyakarta. The photos of these findings are mostly personal archives, whose origin is then unknown. The photos that have been collected then I respond using text or add other visual forms so that it is hoped that it can bring up new interpretations that include broader narratives such as issues of race, power, ecology.The finished works are then recorded using the scannography method, aiming to allow the desired image enlargement, to bring out the texture of paper and ink along with the statement of the work to be more visible and strong.
Mix Media, Variable Dimention, 2020 – Now
Artistic Journey Number 1-36, 2023
This work is included in the Anonymous Photograph Project series, which I started working on in 2020. I collect old photos in thrift and antique places, which I then modify by adding or subtracting elements. This project is a long-term work, which I am still working on today. For me, this project is important as a reflection of my daily life as well as a search and shaping my artistic work as an artist. The photos that I present this time are suspected to be documentation photos of road construction in transmigration areas located in Sumatra, Indonesia.
This documentation photo uses a board that functions as a marker and measuring the road per kilometer. I then responded to the board with various techniques, such as stacking with black or white ink, and by peeling off the outermost part of the photo paper. I hope this work can reflect a person’s journey in their personal life. How we see the landscape around us, how to mark the movement of humans from one place to another. How an artist finds a way and experiments in his artistic work.
Potrait Batu-Batu, 2022
Gemstones and Crystals have a long history and strong ties to human existence. Humans associate these types of stones with the month of birth, health, power, and even spiritual matters. Their presence is inseparable from the efforts of traditional miners, who risk their lives in the culverts tens of meters below the ground surface. The stone materials are then sent to China to be made into health and beauty products, and then marketed to other countries at prices that are many times higher. I think this is a piece of the story from the gemstone market.
If I remember correctly, when I was eleven or twelve years old, my interest in gemstones began with my friendships with people who were much older, some of whom were even the same age as my father. My acquaintances often gathered and hung out across from my house, while earning a living by parking their vehicles around the shop. From them I often got information and saw the stones they had. Conversations about the types of stones, fiber shapes, luster and color, prices, and even mystical properties or beliefs became familiar.
In 2014 I had the opportunity to undergo an artist residency at Bumi Pemuda Rahayu which is located in Dlingo village, Yogyakarta. During the residency, for the first time I processed my interest in stones into a work. I and my fellow residents diligently searched for gemstones along the Oyo River, not far from where we were residing. I then processed the experience of searching for stones by creating a simulation using a photo of the Oyo River from above, and then processing the stones that I had found which I then placed on the photo. This simulation aims for other people to be able to imagine and see the details of the stones from where they come from. Over the years, memories and pleasures have arisen and disappeared, this time my curiosity about the world of stones did not arise directly from the stones.
The book Das kleine Buch der Edelsteine is a small book that reviews precious stones, printed in 1934 in Leipzig Germany. This book contains illustrations of amazing realistic images, made by a German artist and illustrator named Hans Lang. I accidentally found the book in a second-hand goods place. I then cut up the images and illustrations by Hans Lang and combined them with anonymous photos that I had collected earlier. The anonymous photos that I chose for the collage material are portrait photos. The portrait photos overlap with images of rocks, sometimes becoming a foothold, backdrop, mask, shadow, filling each other. This work tries to emphasize and re-question the relationship between humans and objects around them, in a more specific context, the relationship between humans and precious stones.
Update this project in the end of years 2024.
