As always Jogja's art scene is booming! We have been lucky to see (and participate in) a variety of really great work. I'll be sharing the highlights in a series of posts. The first week we were here we were lucky to be invited to be a part of Octora's Makeup Workshop that was a part of her residency with the Cemeti Art House (Cemeti has been at the foundation of the contemporary arts community here in Jogja since 1988).
About Octora's work for the Cemeti Art House residency:
'Project of Intimacy' (OCTORA)
The body is the prominent subject of almost every thought and idea that serves as the foundation for Oktora's creative works. In considering the sequence of her creative work, the stages of her creative process, we can not ignore the factors of her personal experience. For example, once she studied how to illustrate the human body or torso in the department of painting and sculpture; always with a unique and personal method encouraging, pushing forward her characteristic expression; in the form of perceptions, interpretations, reflections, or revisions of her conceptions of the body. In a very personal way, Octora contemplated her revisions by exploring Yogyakarta on her bicycle for three months. Reclaiming her ability to ride a bicycle in the midst of the busy-ness of the city, after more than two decades of driving a car in Bandung, Oktora expressed her rage like a small child who was continuously adjusting to the physical changes in her body. How the human spirit becomes susceptible when our car places us as a moving shell that is often overprotected while driving. Thus, during the three month residency, Oktora contemplating while bicycling through the urban Yogyakarta neighborhoods; imagining a free body, 'naked', unimpeded, knowing her potential and recalculating her strength. Meanwhile, the body became the shell that protected her spirit.
Workshop in progress
The Landing Soon residency is a period of production, contemplative production, idea production. Often the artists make use of analysis and experimentation to review their entire creative process.
Oktora revised her ideas about the body beginning with the questions: Why must it be continuously protected and defended? Isn't it tiring, weakening and often silly? Why don't we ever 'celebrate' the body? Free it from the social constructions, the indifference with the political, social and economic norms of this country?
Nindityo Adipurnomo, 2009
Cemeti Art House
Nindityo Adipurnomo and Mella Jaarsma
participants
Ned Branchi
Ned and Benny
baby, baby, baby
Octora
