Amidst the development of Indonesian art in the eighties, Arahmaiani has probably been its most influential female artist. This was mostly because of her artistic breakthrough; her explorations with new thoughts in visual arts. Her sharp insight about colliding of art and daily life merged in some different artistic media (e.g. video art, performance art, industrial objects, photography, and painting). All these found their roots not only in Arahmaiani's restlessness in viewing the development of the art world in Indonesia, which was once dominated by the academic circle; but also in Arahmaiani's international network. Arahmaiani's position in the Asia Pacific art circle has been provided with her keen understanding of the discourses that are going on in the developing world. The ways these discourses play some roles in her personal experience become the most important part of her artistic background.

Arahmaiani's happening art in the early eighties, Accident I and Newspaper Man (1981), that she performed on the streets and shopping malls of Bandung, opened the door for new, more contextual, artistic possibilities in Indonesia. Meanwhile, Arahmaiani's exhibition in 1994, Sex, Religion and Coca Cola, marked the beginning of her artistic work in Indonesia after she finished her study in Australia. This particular work depicted how taboos in the society can become a source of artistic inspirations, as the artists are criticizing or simply questioning about these existing taboos.

Arahmaiani was born in Bandung in 1961. Her strong Islamic background had once constructed her epistheme as she inherited the religion from her parents. Arahmaiani has been questioning this "religious inheritance" since she was very young. Her childhood dream had meanwhile inspired her to create Aku Ingin Jadi Nabi (I Want to Be a Prophet, 1999), where Arahmaiani clashed "religious facts" with the social facts existing around her. Arahmaiani believes that the life we are now living is actually a social construction, a brainchild of a patriarchal culture. The masculine ethics that has become the contemporary hegemony is no mere illusion. For Arahmaiani, it forms real walls, scattered every where in Indonesia's social systems. It does not mean, however, that feminis discourses and the like must become dogmatic. Arahmaiani has a faith in the individual. She believes that the individual is able to find his or her own way free from the overbearing discourses, or simply to play around the codes of these discourses. Two of her latest works, His-Story on My Body (2000) and Dayang Sumbi (2000), touch upon this belief.

To be a female artist in Indonesia is to be a part of a paradoxical life. Arahmaiani is very much aware about this, as she is also aware of the paradoxes existing in the grand narration of the mondial culture. Gradually, Arahmaiani's way of seeing finds its source in her widening outlook. Arahmaiani no longer questions about what is going on here in this part of the world, and more about what is currently going on out there in the world.

Aminudin TH Siregar

Born on 1961 in Bandung.
Studied at Bandung Institute of Technology (BFA, 1983), Paddington Art School, Sydney, Australia (1986) and Academie voor Beeldende Kunst, Enschede, The Netherlands (1992).

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
1998 "Traditions/Tensions", Western Australia Museum of Contemporary Art.
1999 "Cities On The Move" Louisiana Museum of Contemporary Art Copenhagen, Hayward Gallery London.
2000 "AWAS! Recent Art From Indonesia", Australian Centre For Contemporary Art, Melbourne; Contemporary Art Space, Canbera; Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Sydney; Cairns Regional Gallery, Cairns, Australia, Hokaido Asakawa Museum of Contemporary Art.
2001 "His-story on My Body" Hillside Terrace Gallery, Tokyo.
2001 "Site + Sight" Lasalle College of the Arts, Singapore; "Upstream Project" Amsterdam & Hoorn.
2003 Venice Biennial, Italy.

SELECTED PERFORMANCES
1998 "Burning Bodies, Burning Country", Musee de Castieva, Almaty, Kazakstan.
1999 "Show Me Your Heart" - Und Ab Die Post, Postfuhramt Berlin.
2000 "His-story (II)" Werklieta Biennale, Germany.
2001 "Violence - Hate No More" 3rd Performance Biennale, Israel "Tell Me The Story" Za Hall, Tokyo; Japan Society, New York; Shiga Museum, Osaka.
2002 "Visit to My World" Asian Fine Arts Gallery, Berlin.

back to top