Brigitta Isabella navigates her encounters with people, objects, and discourses through various knowledge production platforms that operate at the intersection of art history, critical theories, and cultural activism. She is affiliated with a self-organized research group based in Yogyakarta, Kunci Study Forum & Collective; a network of feminist artists across Indonesian archipelago PERETAS (Perempuan Lintas Batas, Women Crossing Boundaries); and a member of the translocal editorial collective of Southeast of Now. Her academic research trajectory revolves around the questions of the politics of mobility and cosmopolitanism in art practices, the making and unmaking of geopolitical aesthetics, and the (art) history of transnational solidarity. For the last 5 years, she tackles these topics by inquiring into the artistic exchanges of Third World artists during the Cold War era and cultural diplomacy in the afterlives of Bandung Conference (1955). She is currently also exploring the stories of forced mobility among Indonesian-Chinese artists against the backdrop of political turmoil in China and Indonesia--narratives which are often overlooked in postcolonial-nationalist art historiography. In 2014, she initiated From Bandung to Berlin (http://frombandungtoberlin.com), a platform for trans-local collaboration built from the vocabularies of "political astronomy" by means of dis/connecting transnational narratives according to critical and geopolitical amplitudes during the Cold War.
This paper proposes ‘imagespeech’ as a conceptual framework to discuss the political relationship... more This paper proposes ‘imagespeech’ as a conceptual framework to discuss the political relationship between visual representation and distribution of voices that produce structures of (in)visibility and (in)audibility within the art historical legacies of colonialism, modernism, and nationalism. In particular, it explores the biography, materiality, and audienceship of Citra Irian (Image of Irian) – a series of artworks made between 1975 and 1985 by Sunaryo, who claims that his work resembles ‘primitive lines’ of Papuan material cultures and conveys the spiritual forces of Indonesian nationalism. In 1981, an art student named Semsar Siahaan burned down one of Sunaryo’s Citra Irian sculptures as an iconoclastic happening art act. Beyond a story of dispute between two Indonesian male artists, this paper employs imagespeech to listen to the various conflicting historical voices that resound from Citra Irian to identify by whom, how, and what Citra Irian was made to say. By asking ‘who has made an image speak?’ (a historical inquiry) and ‘what can an image say?’ (a speculative inquiry), this paper aims to understand primitive images, particularly those inflected with histories of silencing and speaking out, as a multimodal field that contains the possibility of practicing democratic audienceship and the ethics of representation in the way we engage with art history.
This paper interrogates the logic of inclusion and exclusion that foregrounds the ethnocentrism a... more This paper interrogates the logic of inclusion and exclusion that foregrounds the ethnocentrism and spatial boundedness of the state project’s national identity construction and proposes critical terms of discussion that challenge the limiting nation-centric framework prevalent in the dominant modern art historiography discourse. Drawing on primary archival research, it describes accounts of Lembaga Seniman Yin Hua (Yin Hua Meishu Xiehui, 印華美術協會, Yin Hua Artist Organization), an art organization established in 1955 in Jakarta and analyzes it against the backdrop of the Sino-Indonesian diplomatic relationship during the Cold War era. By engaging with the ambivalent aesthetic and politic of Chinese Indonesian artists, this paper recognizes the active and strategic agency of Chinese Indonesians as both insiders and outsiders in China and Indonesia under the uncertain circumstances of their dual nationality status. It argues that Yin Hua ambivalently navigated between the political patronage of Indonesia and China, performed dual loyalty to Indonesian and Sino-centric art history, and exhibited multiple artistic lineages that disrupted the stabilized territory of postcolonial nation-state geographical and cultural border. Weaving exhibition history, diplomatic history, and critical ethnic studies through a thread of transnational perspective, this paper provides historical narratives that unsettle the roots of racializing logic in the political articulation of nationalism and pushes toward an epistemic shift in rethinking categories of national identity, ethnicity, and citizenship.
Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 2022
This essay proposes nonsynchronous juxtaposition as a narrative device to critically engage with ... more This essay proposes nonsynchronous juxtaposition as a narrative device to critically engage with the complex historical legacies of the Bandung Conference 1955 and to reclaim the anticolonial poetic of the Bandung Spirit's transnational solidarity with a classed and gendered perspective of migrant workers' contemporary struggles. It argues that juxtaposition forges "Bandung chronopolitics", a postcolonial politics of time that invokes affective entanglements of historical memories and present anticolonial transnational struggles. To demonstrate the creative and dialogical potential of rewriting solidarities in juxtaposition, this essay performs a close reading that puts side by side two poems titled "Kepada Sahabat Asia Afrika" (To Afro-Asian Friends, 1961) by Sugiarti Siswadi and "Seusai Badai Berpeluk Puisi" (After the Hurricane Embraced a Poem, 2009) by Mega Vristian. This essay summarily positions the poetic of juxtaposition and Bandung chronopolitics as a discursive strategy to avoid unchecked glorification of Bandung legacies and to repurpose the Bandung Spirit as a political imagination that brings historical depth to the works of Third World solidarity from below against the highly coordinated global imperial capitalism.
This paper performs a re-reading of three dances by Indonesian artists by using the metaphor of g... more This paper performs a re-reading of three dances by Indonesian artists by using the metaphor of ghost as its conceptual framework. The paper aims at presenting a critique to the construction of national cultural identity in the period between the 1940s until the 1970s. Through the spectre of Topeng Kelono from Kelono dance play (1916) by Raden Mas Jodjana (1893-1972), the spectre of Kasuari bird from Tari Merak (1964) by Irawati Durban Ardjo (1943-) and the spectre of ngung ngung ngung cakcakcak from Cak Tarian Rina (1972) by Sardono Waluyo Kusumo (1945-), the paper assesses the complex relationship between tradition and modernity under the forces of orientalism, postcolonial nationalism and Orde Baru's developmentalism, that have played dominant roles in the construction of Indonesian identity. These three dances will be demonstrated as haunting spectres, because the confl ict and controversy that surrounded them in their respective period of existence show ontological anxieties inside the discourse of national identity claimed by dominant cultural stakeholders. ABSTRAK Tulisan ini melakukan pembacaan ulang terhadap tiga karya tari seniman Indonesia dengan menggunakan metafora hantu sebagai kerangka konseptual kajian sosial budaya untuk mengkritik struktur pembentukan identitas kebudayaan nasional era 1940-an sampai 1970-an. Melalui Kelono karya (1916) Raden Mas Jodjana (1893-1972), Tari Merak (1964) gubahan Irawati Durban Ardjo (1943-) dan koreografi Cak Tarian Rina (1972) karya Sardono Waluyo Kusumo (1945-) akan diurai kompleksitas relasi antara tradisi dan modernitas serta kaitannya dengan struktur produksi identitas Indonesia yang diciptakan oleh jalinan wacana orientalisme, wacana nasionalisme Negara pascakolonial dan wacana ideologi pembangunan Orde Baru. Tiga tari yang menjadi fokus tulisan ini didemonstrasikan sebagai hantu-hantu yang bergentayangan oleh karena konfl ik dan kontroversi yang mengiringinya menunjukkan suatu kegelisahan ontologis dalam narasi keutuhan identitas nasional yang dijunjung pemangku otoritas kebudayaan pada masing-masing masa hadirnya tari-tari tersebut.
INTERLACED JOURNEYS Diaspora and the Contemporary in Southeast Asian Art, 2020
This essay looks at the mobility of Indonesian-born artists in an attempt to understand how trave... more This essay looks at the mobility of Indonesian-born artists in an attempt to understand how travel can be a transformative cultural practice not only within, but also against, the hegemonic structures that instrumentalize cultural identity as a commodity in a global art scene. It focuses on the desire to travel and the experiences of being mobile in the mobile lives and works of Tintin Wulia (b. 1972) and an artist couple, Irwan Ahmett (b. 1975) and Tita Salina (b. 1973), hereinafter referred as a single entity as Ahmett Salina. Tintin’s and Ahmett Salina’s reasons to be always on the move are contingent on the globalization of contemporary art (both its market and discourse) as well as their personal history and individual aspirations. The subjects of this article seem to be stationed in what James Clifford called “transit lounge”, a space in which translocal existences are “dwelling in travel and submit their identities to ‘routes’ rather than ‘roots’ in a moving picture of a world that doesn’t stand still”.4 Clifford’s image of a continually moving world runs parallel to the increase of mobility within the globalizing artworld. Here, travel and mobility performed by Tintin and Ahmett Salina are considered to have diasporic dimensions in their practices of displacement and interconnection with different cultural contexts.
Ambitious Alignments: New Histories of Southeast Asian Art, 1945-1990, 2018
At the heart of the Cold War conflict were the competing worldviews held by the two blocs—Soviet ... more At the heart of the Cold War conflict were the competing worldviews held by the two blocs—Soviet communism and American capitalism. In a cultural context, this tension played out as an ideological competition between socialist realism from the Soviet Union and abstract expressionism from the United States. Art functioned as a means to demonstrate political and intellectual achievement, and as such both blocs funded exhibitions, travel grants and scholarships for cultural practitioners in nonaligned states as a means of soft power. Aggressive attempts to sway emerging postcolonial states were at times suspected as the return of imperialism, thus the rhetoric for Cold War ideological battles was disguised under the affectionate term of ‘friendship’. International funding from Cold War blocs to develop the fields of education, culture, economy and infrastructure in Indonesia was promoted under the guise of ‘friendship aid’, as can be seen in the pages of state-funded diplomatic embassy magazines such as Negeri Sovyet (Soviet country) and Aneka Amerika (American miscellany).
This essay will outline the strategies of US and Soviet cultural diplomacy in Indonesia during the Cold War years from 1950 to 1965. Rather than work within the strict framework of Cold War bipolarity, I will explore the reciprocity between nationalism and internationalism, and examine how Indonesian artists transcended ideological divides. This essay considers artistic and exhibition outcomes of cultural diplomacy in Indonesia under that government’s astute policy of ‘friendship’, which allowed both the government and artists to engage with—and also work outside—the bounds of cultural propaganda. I will then look at the traffic of cultural exchange between Indonesia and the world that operated outside of the influence of Cold War geopolitics.
Tulisan ini merupakan pengantar editorial buku Mengasah Asuh: Kumpulan Tulisan Ibu Pekerja Migran... more Tulisan ini merupakan pengantar editorial buku Mengasah Asuh: Kumpulan Tulisan Ibu Pekerja Migran dari Indonesia. Sebagai salah satu fasilitator workshop menulis, saya menceritakan proses belajar bersama kami sebagai suatu upaya mempertaruhkan waktu luangnya untuk merebut narasi dan posisi kelas para ibu-pekerja migran. Saya membingkai tulisan para penulis sebagai suatu genre "kisah kasus," yang lahir dari kegelisahan personal, urgensi politik, dan keinginan untuk bersolidaritas.
Terdiri dari sembilan ibu-pekerja migran dari Indonesia yang bekerja di Hong Kong, Taiwan, dan Singapura, karya mereka mengajak kita mengarungi seluk beluk dunia kerja domestik pekerja migran, suka duka menjadi ibu dalam hubungan keluarga jarak jauh, dan daya gerak solidaritas sesama perempuan kelas pekerja.
Pengantar editor untuk buku Unjuk Rasa, Seni - Performativitas - Aktivisme. Buku ini diterbitkan ... more Pengantar editor untuk buku Unjuk Rasa, Seni - Performativitas - Aktivisme. Buku ini diterbitkan oleh Yayasan Kelola dan tersusun atas kontribusi dari Alia Swastika, Asri Saraswati, Cholil Mahmud, Dede Pramayoza, Diah Kusumaningrum , Egbert Wits, Erni Aladjai, Hikmat Darmawan, Ismal Muntaha & Bunga Siagian, Joned Suryatmoko , Manuel Alberto Maia, Muchammad Cora, Muhammad Sibawaihi, Morika Tetelepta, Rachmi Diyah Larasati, Yuli Andari Merdikaningtyas.
Dari Pembantu Seni Lukis Kita: Kumpulan Tulisan Oei Sian Yok 1956-1961, 2019
Tulisan pengantar ini bermaksud merangkai konteks-konteks yang mengiringi kemungkinan pembacaan a... more Tulisan pengantar ini bermaksud merangkai konteks-konteks yang mengiringi kemungkinan pembacaan atas pemikiran dan sosok Oei Sian Yok, Pembantu Seni Lukis Kita. Pada bagian Situs saya memaparkan sejarah singkat dan karakter majalah Star Weekly tempat Pembantu Seni Lukis Kita hadir secara reguler. Pada bagian Wacana, saya mencoba menempatkan pandangannya tentang seni, seniman, dan sejarah seni yang berinteraksi dalam medan pergulatan wacana kebudayaan selama periode 1950-an – 1960-an. Terakhir, pada bagian Sosok saya menceritakan kembali momen-momen terhubungnya jaringan keingintahuan-pengetahuan dan potongan narasi ingatan yang memungkinkan kita merekonstruksi sosok Oei Sian Yok dalam ketidakutuhannya.
Oei Sian Yok lahir di Magelang pada 1926. Ia belajar seni di Balai Pendidikan Universiter Guru Gambar di bawah Fakultas Ilmu Pengetahuan Teknik Universitas Indonesia, Bandung (1949- 1953), kemudian melanjutkan studi sejarah seni di Belanda. Sepulangnya ke Jakarta tahun 1956, ia mulai bekerja menulis sebagai “Pembantu Seni Lukis Kita” untuk majalah Star Weekly sampai majalah ini dibredel pemerintah pada 1961. Setelahnya meninggalkan dunia kritik seni ia lantas mengerjakan banyak hal, antara lain menjual kerajinan tangan buatannya dan membuka biro periklanan di rumahnya. Pasca tragedi 1965 dan akibat tekanan politik rasial Orde Baru, Oei Sian Yok mengganti namanya menjadi Eugenie Darmawinata. Ia meninggal dunia di Jakarta pada 2002.
Kontak saya untuk mendapatkan versi utuh buku ini.
Exhibition catalogue "Para Sekutu yang Tidak Bisa Berkata Tidak" (The Acquiescent Allies) curated by Grace Samboh, 2022
(Indonesian version also available in the latter part of this document)
This essay explores t... more (Indonesian version also available in the latter part of this document)
This essay explores the temporal discourse of the exhibition Contemporary Art of the Non-Aligned Countries, by reviewing the moment created by this exhibition in Jakarta, the historical era that surrounded it when the exhibition was held in 1995 and the temporal logic that the exhibition conceptualised from the perspective of the (Global) South. Grace Samboh’s curatorial work, The Acquiescent Allies, takes the exhibition history of Contemporary Art of the Non-Aligned Countries (from hereon, referred to as Non-Aligned) as one of its points of departure. Several works from the 1995 exhibition are re-exhibited in The Allies Who Can’t Say No, thus enabling this essay to juxtapose and weave together the temporal discourse of the Non-Aligned exhibition with the narratives of several historical artworks and archival research projects that Grace included in her exhibition. The aim of this essay is to offer a reading of how the intellectual legacy of the Non-Aligned exhibition engages with and reflects the artistic motivation of the South in other temporal and spatial contexts.
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Tulisan ini mengeksplorasi wacana temporal pameran Seni Rupa Kontemporer Negara-Negara Non-Blok dengan mengulas momen yang diciptakan pameran ini di Jakarta, era historis yang melingkupinya saat diadakan pada 1995, dan logika temporal yang dikonseptualisasinya dari perspektif Selatan. Karya kuratorial Grace Samboh, Para Sekutu yang Tidak Bisa Berkata Tidak, menjadikan pameran Seni Rupa Kontemporer Negara-Negara Non-Blok sebagai salah satu titik berangkatnya. Beberapa karya dari pameran Non-Blok ditampilkan kembali dalam Para Sekutu Yang Tidak Bisa Berkata Tidak, sehingga memungkinkan tulisan ini untuk menyandingkan dan menjahit wacana temporal pameran Non-Blok dengan narasi beberapa karya bersejarah dan proyek berbasis riset arsip yang dikurasi Grace untuk pamerannya. Tulisan ini ingin menawarkan pembacaan atas bagaimana warisan intelektual pameran Non-Blok berpapasan dan berpantulan dengan motivasi artistik Selatan dalam lintasan ruang dan waktu lainnya.
This essay looks at the way an open letter forms a counter-public space and an imagined community... more This essay looks at the way an open letter forms a counter-public space and an imagined community of feminist readership. It delves into the narratives and the paratextual elements of an open letter written by Mia Bustam titled “Should Women Artists (Seniwati) Separate Themselves from Artists (Seniman)?,” which was published in the Indonesian leftist newspaper Harian Rakjat in 1960. The explicit addressee of her letter was Mia’s close friend, Kartika, who serves as a grammatical interlocutor and a subtext for Mia to carve an intimate communication with fellow women artists. As a personal and a public mode of communication, Mia’s letter serves a dual function, that is both an expression of radical intimacy as well as of a politics of counter-public intervention. Fittingly sitting in a genre of creative political writing, Mia’s letter demonstrates a language ideology and a social imaginary of interpersonal subjectivities, which at once calling out the chronic sexism in the art scene as well as calling in for broader feminist solidarity among women artists. I argue that reading and writing open letters allows us to tweak the queer conceptualization of “public” and “publicness” (Michael Warner, 2002) in our literary-social practice. At the heart of this argument, the epistolary form invites us to dwell a bit more on the complexity of the simple yet fundamental question we ask every time we start writing, which is: “Who are we writing for?”
Indonesian Scholarship and Research Support Foundation (ISRSF) Best Essay of 2018, 2018
This essay is the 1st prize winner of ISRSF history essay competition in 2018. The judges for thi... more This essay is the 1st prize winner of ISRSF history essay competition in 2018. The judges for this competition were Dr. Baskara Wardaya, Dr. Peter Carey and Dr. Yosef Jakababa.
This paper proposes ‘imagespeech’ as a conceptual framework to discuss the political relationship... more This paper proposes ‘imagespeech’ as a conceptual framework to discuss the political relationship between visual representation and distribution of voices that produce structures of (in)visibility and (in)audibility within the art historical legacies of colonialism, modernism, and nationalism. In particular, it explores the biography, materiality, and audienceship of Citra Irian (Image of Irian) – a series of artworks made between 1975 and 1985 by Sunaryo, who claims that his work resembles ‘primitive lines’ of Papuan material cultures and conveys the spiritual forces of Indonesian nationalism. In 1981, an art student named Semsar Siahaan burned down one of Sunaryo’s Citra Irian sculptures as an iconoclastic happening art act. Beyond a story of dispute between two Indonesian male artists, this paper employs imagespeech to listen to the various conflicting historical voices that resound from Citra Irian to identify by whom, how, and what Citra Irian was made to say. By asking ‘who has made an image speak?’ (a historical inquiry) and ‘what can an image say?’ (a speculative inquiry), this paper aims to understand primitive images, particularly those inflected with histories of silencing and speaking out, as a multimodal field that contains the possibility of practicing democratic audienceship and the ethics of representation in the way we engage with art history.
This paper interrogates the logic of inclusion and exclusion that foregrounds the ethnocentrism a... more This paper interrogates the logic of inclusion and exclusion that foregrounds the ethnocentrism and spatial boundedness of the state project’s national identity construction and proposes critical terms of discussion that challenge the limiting nation-centric framework prevalent in the dominant modern art historiography discourse. Drawing on primary archival research, it describes accounts of Lembaga Seniman Yin Hua (Yin Hua Meishu Xiehui, 印華美術協會, Yin Hua Artist Organization), an art organization established in 1955 in Jakarta and analyzes it against the backdrop of the Sino-Indonesian diplomatic relationship during the Cold War era. By engaging with the ambivalent aesthetic and politic of Chinese Indonesian artists, this paper recognizes the active and strategic agency of Chinese Indonesians as both insiders and outsiders in China and Indonesia under the uncertain circumstances of their dual nationality status. It argues that Yin Hua ambivalently navigated between the political patronage of Indonesia and China, performed dual loyalty to Indonesian and Sino-centric art history, and exhibited multiple artistic lineages that disrupted the stabilized territory of postcolonial nation-state geographical and cultural border. Weaving exhibition history, diplomatic history, and critical ethnic studies through a thread of transnational perspective, this paper provides historical narratives that unsettle the roots of racializing logic in the political articulation of nationalism and pushes toward an epistemic shift in rethinking categories of national identity, ethnicity, and citizenship.
Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 2022
This essay proposes nonsynchronous juxtaposition as a narrative device to critically engage with ... more This essay proposes nonsynchronous juxtaposition as a narrative device to critically engage with the complex historical legacies of the Bandung Conference 1955 and to reclaim the anticolonial poetic of the Bandung Spirit's transnational solidarity with a classed and gendered perspective of migrant workers' contemporary struggles. It argues that juxtaposition forges "Bandung chronopolitics", a postcolonial politics of time that invokes affective entanglements of historical memories and present anticolonial transnational struggles. To demonstrate the creative and dialogical potential of rewriting solidarities in juxtaposition, this essay performs a close reading that puts side by side two poems titled "Kepada Sahabat Asia Afrika" (To Afro-Asian Friends, 1961) by Sugiarti Siswadi and "Seusai Badai Berpeluk Puisi" (After the Hurricane Embraced a Poem, 2009) by Mega Vristian. This essay summarily positions the poetic of juxtaposition and Bandung chronopolitics as a discursive strategy to avoid unchecked glorification of Bandung legacies and to repurpose the Bandung Spirit as a political imagination that brings historical depth to the works of Third World solidarity from below against the highly coordinated global imperial capitalism.
This paper performs a re-reading of three dances by Indonesian artists by using the metaphor of g... more This paper performs a re-reading of three dances by Indonesian artists by using the metaphor of ghost as its conceptual framework. The paper aims at presenting a critique to the construction of national cultural identity in the period between the 1940s until the 1970s. Through the spectre of Topeng Kelono from Kelono dance play (1916) by Raden Mas Jodjana (1893-1972), the spectre of Kasuari bird from Tari Merak (1964) by Irawati Durban Ardjo (1943-) and the spectre of ngung ngung ngung cakcakcak from Cak Tarian Rina (1972) by Sardono Waluyo Kusumo (1945-), the paper assesses the complex relationship between tradition and modernity under the forces of orientalism, postcolonial nationalism and Orde Baru's developmentalism, that have played dominant roles in the construction of Indonesian identity. These three dances will be demonstrated as haunting spectres, because the confl ict and controversy that surrounded them in their respective period of existence show ontological anxieties inside the discourse of national identity claimed by dominant cultural stakeholders. ABSTRAK Tulisan ini melakukan pembacaan ulang terhadap tiga karya tari seniman Indonesia dengan menggunakan metafora hantu sebagai kerangka konseptual kajian sosial budaya untuk mengkritik struktur pembentukan identitas kebudayaan nasional era 1940-an sampai 1970-an. Melalui Kelono karya (1916) Raden Mas Jodjana (1893-1972), Tari Merak (1964) gubahan Irawati Durban Ardjo (1943-) dan koreografi Cak Tarian Rina (1972) karya Sardono Waluyo Kusumo (1945-) akan diurai kompleksitas relasi antara tradisi dan modernitas serta kaitannya dengan struktur produksi identitas Indonesia yang diciptakan oleh jalinan wacana orientalisme, wacana nasionalisme Negara pascakolonial dan wacana ideologi pembangunan Orde Baru. Tiga tari yang menjadi fokus tulisan ini didemonstrasikan sebagai hantu-hantu yang bergentayangan oleh karena konfl ik dan kontroversi yang mengiringinya menunjukkan suatu kegelisahan ontologis dalam narasi keutuhan identitas nasional yang dijunjung pemangku otoritas kebudayaan pada masing-masing masa hadirnya tari-tari tersebut.
INTERLACED JOURNEYS Diaspora and the Contemporary in Southeast Asian Art, 2020
This essay looks at the mobility of Indonesian-born artists in an attempt to understand how trave... more This essay looks at the mobility of Indonesian-born artists in an attempt to understand how travel can be a transformative cultural practice not only within, but also against, the hegemonic structures that instrumentalize cultural identity as a commodity in a global art scene. It focuses on the desire to travel and the experiences of being mobile in the mobile lives and works of Tintin Wulia (b. 1972) and an artist couple, Irwan Ahmett (b. 1975) and Tita Salina (b. 1973), hereinafter referred as a single entity as Ahmett Salina. Tintin’s and Ahmett Salina’s reasons to be always on the move are contingent on the globalization of contemporary art (both its market and discourse) as well as their personal history and individual aspirations. The subjects of this article seem to be stationed in what James Clifford called “transit lounge”, a space in which translocal existences are “dwelling in travel and submit their identities to ‘routes’ rather than ‘roots’ in a moving picture of a world that doesn’t stand still”.4 Clifford’s image of a continually moving world runs parallel to the increase of mobility within the globalizing artworld. Here, travel and mobility performed by Tintin and Ahmett Salina are considered to have diasporic dimensions in their practices of displacement and interconnection with different cultural contexts.
Ambitious Alignments: New Histories of Southeast Asian Art, 1945-1990, 2018
At the heart of the Cold War conflict were the competing worldviews held by the two blocs—Soviet ... more At the heart of the Cold War conflict were the competing worldviews held by the two blocs—Soviet communism and American capitalism. In a cultural context, this tension played out as an ideological competition between socialist realism from the Soviet Union and abstract expressionism from the United States. Art functioned as a means to demonstrate political and intellectual achievement, and as such both blocs funded exhibitions, travel grants and scholarships for cultural practitioners in nonaligned states as a means of soft power. Aggressive attempts to sway emerging postcolonial states were at times suspected as the return of imperialism, thus the rhetoric for Cold War ideological battles was disguised under the affectionate term of ‘friendship’. International funding from Cold War blocs to develop the fields of education, culture, economy and infrastructure in Indonesia was promoted under the guise of ‘friendship aid’, as can be seen in the pages of state-funded diplomatic embassy magazines such as Negeri Sovyet (Soviet country) and Aneka Amerika (American miscellany).
This essay will outline the strategies of US and Soviet cultural diplomacy in Indonesia during the Cold War years from 1950 to 1965. Rather than work within the strict framework of Cold War bipolarity, I will explore the reciprocity between nationalism and internationalism, and examine how Indonesian artists transcended ideological divides. This essay considers artistic and exhibition outcomes of cultural diplomacy in Indonesia under that government’s astute policy of ‘friendship’, which allowed both the government and artists to engage with—and also work outside—the bounds of cultural propaganda. I will then look at the traffic of cultural exchange between Indonesia and the world that operated outside of the influence of Cold War geopolitics.
Tulisan ini merupakan pengantar editorial buku Mengasah Asuh: Kumpulan Tulisan Ibu Pekerja Migran... more Tulisan ini merupakan pengantar editorial buku Mengasah Asuh: Kumpulan Tulisan Ibu Pekerja Migran dari Indonesia. Sebagai salah satu fasilitator workshop menulis, saya menceritakan proses belajar bersama kami sebagai suatu upaya mempertaruhkan waktu luangnya untuk merebut narasi dan posisi kelas para ibu-pekerja migran. Saya membingkai tulisan para penulis sebagai suatu genre "kisah kasus," yang lahir dari kegelisahan personal, urgensi politik, dan keinginan untuk bersolidaritas.
Terdiri dari sembilan ibu-pekerja migran dari Indonesia yang bekerja di Hong Kong, Taiwan, dan Singapura, karya mereka mengajak kita mengarungi seluk beluk dunia kerja domestik pekerja migran, suka duka menjadi ibu dalam hubungan keluarga jarak jauh, dan daya gerak solidaritas sesama perempuan kelas pekerja.
Pengantar editor untuk buku Unjuk Rasa, Seni - Performativitas - Aktivisme. Buku ini diterbitkan ... more Pengantar editor untuk buku Unjuk Rasa, Seni - Performativitas - Aktivisme. Buku ini diterbitkan oleh Yayasan Kelola dan tersusun atas kontribusi dari Alia Swastika, Asri Saraswati, Cholil Mahmud, Dede Pramayoza, Diah Kusumaningrum , Egbert Wits, Erni Aladjai, Hikmat Darmawan, Ismal Muntaha & Bunga Siagian, Joned Suryatmoko , Manuel Alberto Maia, Muchammad Cora, Muhammad Sibawaihi, Morika Tetelepta, Rachmi Diyah Larasati, Yuli Andari Merdikaningtyas.
Dari Pembantu Seni Lukis Kita: Kumpulan Tulisan Oei Sian Yok 1956-1961, 2019
Tulisan pengantar ini bermaksud merangkai konteks-konteks yang mengiringi kemungkinan pembacaan a... more Tulisan pengantar ini bermaksud merangkai konteks-konteks yang mengiringi kemungkinan pembacaan atas pemikiran dan sosok Oei Sian Yok, Pembantu Seni Lukis Kita. Pada bagian Situs saya memaparkan sejarah singkat dan karakter majalah Star Weekly tempat Pembantu Seni Lukis Kita hadir secara reguler. Pada bagian Wacana, saya mencoba menempatkan pandangannya tentang seni, seniman, dan sejarah seni yang berinteraksi dalam medan pergulatan wacana kebudayaan selama periode 1950-an – 1960-an. Terakhir, pada bagian Sosok saya menceritakan kembali momen-momen terhubungnya jaringan keingintahuan-pengetahuan dan potongan narasi ingatan yang memungkinkan kita merekonstruksi sosok Oei Sian Yok dalam ketidakutuhannya.
Oei Sian Yok lahir di Magelang pada 1926. Ia belajar seni di Balai Pendidikan Universiter Guru Gambar di bawah Fakultas Ilmu Pengetahuan Teknik Universitas Indonesia, Bandung (1949- 1953), kemudian melanjutkan studi sejarah seni di Belanda. Sepulangnya ke Jakarta tahun 1956, ia mulai bekerja menulis sebagai “Pembantu Seni Lukis Kita” untuk majalah Star Weekly sampai majalah ini dibredel pemerintah pada 1961. Setelahnya meninggalkan dunia kritik seni ia lantas mengerjakan banyak hal, antara lain menjual kerajinan tangan buatannya dan membuka biro periklanan di rumahnya. Pasca tragedi 1965 dan akibat tekanan politik rasial Orde Baru, Oei Sian Yok mengganti namanya menjadi Eugenie Darmawinata. Ia meninggal dunia di Jakarta pada 2002.
Kontak saya untuk mendapatkan versi utuh buku ini.
Exhibition catalogue "Para Sekutu yang Tidak Bisa Berkata Tidak" (The Acquiescent Allies) curated by Grace Samboh, 2022
(Indonesian version also available in the latter part of this document)
This essay explores t... more (Indonesian version also available in the latter part of this document)
This essay explores the temporal discourse of the exhibition Contemporary Art of the Non-Aligned Countries, by reviewing the moment created by this exhibition in Jakarta, the historical era that surrounded it when the exhibition was held in 1995 and the temporal logic that the exhibition conceptualised from the perspective of the (Global) South. Grace Samboh’s curatorial work, The Acquiescent Allies, takes the exhibition history of Contemporary Art of the Non-Aligned Countries (from hereon, referred to as Non-Aligned) as one of its points of departure. Several works from the 1995 exhibition are re-exhibited in The Allies Who Can’t Say No, thus enabling this essay to juxtapose and weave together the temporal discourse of the Non-Aligned exhibition with the narratives of several historical artworks and archival research projects that Grace included in her exhibition. The aim of this essay is to offer a reading of how the intellectual legacy of the Non-Aligned exhibition engages with and reflects the artistic motivation of the South in other temporal and spatial contexts.
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Tulisan ini mengeksplorasi wacana temporal pameran Seni Rupa Kontemporer Negara-Negara Non-Blok dengan mengulas momen yang diciptakan pameran ini di Jakarta, era historis yang melingkupinya saat diadakan pada 1995, dan logika temporal yang dikonseptualisasinya dari perspektif Selatan. Karya kuratorial Grace Samboh, Para Sekutu yang Tidak Bisa Berkata Tidak, menjadikan pameran Seni Rupa Kontemporer Negara-Negara Non-Blok sebagai salah satu titik berangkatnya. Beberapa karya dari pameran Non-Blok ditampilkan kembali dalam Para Sekutu Yang Tidak Bisa Berkata Tidak, sehingga memungkinkan tulisan ini untuk menyandingkan dan menjahit wacana temporal pameran Non-Blok dengan narasi beberapa karya bersejarah dan proyek berbasis riset arsip yang dikurasi Grace untuk pamerannya. Tulisan ini ingin menawarkan pembacaan atas bagaimana warisan intelektual pameran Non-Blok berpapasan dan berpantulan dengan motivasi artistik Selatan dalam lintasan ruang dan waktu lainnya.
This essay looks at the way an open letter forms a counter-public space and an imagined community... more This essay looks at the way an open letter forms a counter-public space and an imagined community of feminist readership. It delves into the narratives and the paratextual elements of an open letter written by Mia Bustam titled “Should Women Artists (Seniwati) Separate Themselves from Artists (Seniman)?,” which was published in the Indonesian leftist newspaper Harian Rakjat in 1960. The explicit addressee of her letter was Mia’s close friend, Kartika, who serves as a grammatical interlocutor and a subtext for Mia to carve an intimate communication with fellow women artists. As a personal and a public mode of communication, Mia’s letter serves a dual function, that is both an expression of radical intimacy as well as of a politics of counter-public intervention. Fittingly sitting in a genre of creative political writing, Mia’s letter demonstrates a language ideology and a social imaginary of interpersonal subjectivities, which at once calling out the chronic sexism in the art scene as well as calling in for broader feminist solidarity among women artists. I argue that reading and writing open letters allows us to tweak the queer conceptualization of “public” and “publicness” (Michael Warner, 2002) in our literary-social practice. At the heart of this argument, the epistolary form invites us to dwell a bit more on the complexity of the simple yet fundamental question we ask every time we start writing, which is: “Who are we writing for?”
Indonesian Scholarship and Research Support Foundation (ISRSF) Best Essay of 2018, 2018
This essay is the 1st prize winner of ISRSF history essay competition in 2018. The judges for thi... more This essay is the 1st prize winner of ISRSF history essay competition in 2018. The judges for this competition were Dr. Baskara Wardaya, Dr. Peter Carey and Dr. Yosef Jakababa.
Conference paper: TWO DECADES AFTER 1998 REFORMASI: Achievements and Challenges, November 10, 2017, National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS), Tokyo, 2017
This paper discusses sites of urban infrastructures in Yogyakarta that accommodate the
encounters... more This paper discusses sites of urban infrastructures in Yogyakarta that accommodate the encounters between the contesting ideologies and interests of the emancipated artists-citizens, the government and the capitalist corporate. In the first decade of post-Reformasi era, groups of Yogyakarta’s street artists have been exploring street art as means for activating community engagement and political involvement. Alas, big corporations, with the blessings from the municipal authority, have devalued street art by co-opting it for vulgar advertising. Street wall- -the canvas of the commons—becomes the site where the visual struggle of street artists against the commercialization of public infrastructure distinctly appears. Beyond the aesthetico-political resilience at play in the street walls of Yogyakarta, several artists groups and networks have also initiated performative interventions along the city streets to provoke discussions around the massive construction of malls and hotels, which has caused agrarian conflict and socio-environmental problems over the past decade. Some art projects discussed in this paper are also noteworthy for creating spaces for critical knowledge production through history from below and alternative mapping methods in order to counter the hegemonic vision of state-capitalist urban planning. This paper attempts to ruminate on questions around the relationship between the aesthetics and the politics of reclaiming public spaces by analyzing urban art practices in Yogyakarta. In what ways art projects in urban setting reflect local social conditions two decades after 1998 Reformasi? How does art community connect to other social forces in the 12 on-going project of urbanity? What politics does the aesthetic ideology of urban art enable? What are the limitations and challenges of art practices that were shaped by the will for participatory democracy? Making Use of Politics: Urban Poor Movement
Dewan Kesenian Jakarta dan Penerbit Gang Kabel, 2019
Versi lengkap buku "Dari Pembantu Seni Lukis Kita: Bunga Rampai Tulisan Oei Sian Yok 1956-1961", ... more Versi lengkap buku "Dari Pembantu Seni Lukis Kita: Bunga Rampai Tulisan Oei Sian Yok 1956-1961", bagian dari Seri Wacana Seni Rupa yang diinisiasi Komite Seni Rupa Dewan Kesenian Jakarta.
This dissertation discusses Althusser and Deleuze’s new perspectives on materialist epistemology,... more This dissertation discusses Althusser and Deleuze’s new perspectives on materialist epistemology, which not only reconciles the tension between rationalism and empiricism, but also puts forward new ideas for a radical practice of philosophy that is still relevant for contemporary theoretical endeavour.
In setting up an encounter between Althusser and Deleuze’s philosophy of science, the dissertation includes a French biologist, Jacques Monod (1910-1976) into discussion. In 1965, together with François Jacob and André Lwoff, Monod received the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. Besides that, Monod is also an acclaimed writer on the philosophy of science, as his book Chance and Necessity (1970) gained great success in France. Both Althusser and Deleuze, in different ways and for different aims, have appropriated Monod’s work in molecular biology for their own projects. By using Monod as a common referential point to limit the discussion of Althusser and Deleuze’s epistemology, we shall see the similarity and difference of their new materialist philosophical practices.
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This essay will outline the strategies of US and Soviet cultural diplomacy in Indonesia during the Cold War years from 1950 to 1965. Rather than work within the strict framework of Cold War bipolarity, I will explore the reciprocity between nationalism and internationalism, and examine how Indonesian artists transcended ideological divides. This essay considers artistic and exhibition outcomes of cultural diplomacy in Indonesia under that government’s astute policy of ‘friendship’, which allowed both the government and artists to engage with—and also work outside—the bounds of cultural propaganda. I will then look at the traffic of cultural exchange between Indonesia and the world that operated outside of the influence of Cold War geopolitics.
Terdiri dari sembilan ibu-pekerja migran dari Indonesia yang bekerja di Hong Kong, Taiwan, dan Singapura, karya mereka mengajak kita mengarungi seluk beluk dunia kerja domestik pekerja migran, suka duka menjadi ibu dalam hubungan keluarga jarak jauh, dan daya gerak solidaritas sesama perempuan kelas pekerja.
Oei Sian Yok lahir di Magelang pada 1926. Ia belajar seni di Balai Pendidikan Universiter Guru Gambar di bawah Fakultas Ilmu Pengetahuan Teknik Universitas Indonesia, Bandung (1949- 1953), kemudian melanjutkan studi sejarah seni di Belanda. Sepulangnya ke Jakarta tahun 1956, ia mulai bekerja menulis sebagai “Pembantu
Seni Lukis Kita” untuk majalah Star Weekly sampai majalah ini dibredel pemerintah pada 1961. Setelahnya meninggalkan dunia kritik
seni ia lantas mengerjakan banyak hal, antara lain menjual kerajinan tangan buatannya dan membuka biro periklanan di rumahnya. Pasca tragedi 1965 dan akibat tekanan politik rasial Orde Baru, Oei Sian Yok mengganti namanya menjadi Eugenie Darmawinata. Ia meninggal dunia di Jakarta pada 2002.
Kontak saya untuk mendapatkan versi utuh buku ini.
This essay explores the temporal discourse of the exhibition Contemporary Art of the Non-Aligned Countries, by reviewing the moment created by this exhibition in Jakarta, the historical era that surrounded it when the exhibition was held in 1995 and the temporal logic that the exhibition conceptualised from the perspective of the (Global) South. Grace Samboh’s curatorial work, The Acquiescent Allies, takes the exhibition history of Contemporary Art of the Non-Aligned Countries (from hereon, referred to as Non-Aligned) as one of its points of departure. Several works from the 1995 exhibition are re-exhibited in The Allies Who Can’t Say No, thus enabling this essay to juxtapose and weave together the temporal discourse of the Non-Aligned exhibition with the narratives of several historical artworks and archival research projects that Grace included in her exhibition. The aim of this essay is to offer a reading of how the intellectual legacy of the Non-Aligned exhibition engages with and reflects the artistic motivation of the South in other temporal and spatial contexts.
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Tulisan ini mengeksplorasi wacana temporal pameran Seni Rupa Kontemporer Negara-Negara Non-Blok dengan mengulas momen yang diciptakan pameran ini di Jakarta, era historis yang melingkupinya saat diadakan pada 1995, dan logika temporal yang dikonseptualisasinya dari perspektif Selatan. Karya kuratorial Grace Samboh, Para Sekutu yang Tidak Bisa Berkata Tidak, menjadikan pameran Seni Rupa Kontemporer Negara-Negara Non-Blok sebagai salah satu titik berangkatnya. Beberapa karya dari pameran Non-Blok ditampilkan kembali dalam Para Sekutu Yang Tidak Bisa Berkata Tidak, sehingga memungkinkan tulisan ini untuk menyandingkan dan menjahit wacana temporal pameran Non-Blok dengan narasi beberapa karya bersejarah dan proyek berbasis riset arsip yang dikurasi Grace untuk pamerannya. Tulisan ini ingin menawarkan pembacaan atas bagaimana warisan intelektual pameran Non-Blok berpapasan dan berpantulan dengan motivasi artistik Selatan dalam lintasan ruang dan waktu lainnya.
This essay will outline the strategies of US and Soviet cultural diplomacy in Indonesia during the Cold War years from 1950 to 1965. Rather than work within the strict framework of Cold War bipolarity, I will explore the reciprocity between nationalism and internationalism, and examine how Indonesian artists transcended ideological divides. This essay considers artistic and exhibition outcomes of cultural diplomacy in Indonesia under that government’s astute policy of ‘friendship’, which allowed both the government and artists to engage with—and also work outside—the bounds of cultural propaganda. I will then look at the traffic of cultural exchange between Indonesia and the world that operated outside of the influence of Cold War geopolitics.
Terdiri dari sembilan ibu-pekerja migran dari Indonesia yang bekerja di Hong Kong, Taiwan, dan Singapura, karya mereka mengajak kita mengarungi seluk beluk dunia kerja domestik pekerja migran, suka duka menjadi ibu dalam hubungan keluarga jarak jauh, dan daya gerak solidaritas sesama perempuan kelas pekerja.
Oei Sian Yok lahir di Magelang pada 1926. Ia belajar seni di Balai Pendidikan Universiter Guru Gambar di bawah Fakultas Ilmu Pengetahuan Teknik Universitas Indonesia, Bandung (1949- 1953), kemudian melanjutkan studi sejarah seni di Belanda. Sepulangnya ke Jakarta tahun 1956, ia mulai bekerja menulis sebagai “Pembantu
Seni Lukis Kita” untuk majalah Star Weekly sampai majalah ini dibredel pemerintah pada 1961. Setelahnya meninggalkan dunia kritik
seni ia lantas mengerjakan banyak hal, antara lain menjual kerajinan tangan buatannya dan membuka biro periklanan di rumahnya. Pasca tragedi 1965 dan akibat tekanan politik rasial Orde Baru, Oei Sian Yok mengganti namanya menjadi Eugenie Darmawinata. Ia meninggal dunia di Jakarta pada 2002.
Kontak saya untuk mendapatkan versi utuh buku ini.
This essay explores the temporal discourse of the exhibition Contemporary Art of the Non-Aligned Countries, by reviewing the moment created by this exhibition in Jakarta, the historical era that surrounded it when the exhibition was held in 1995 and the temporal logic that the exhibition conceptualised from the perspective of the (Global) South. Grace Samboh’s curatorial work, The Acquiescent Allies, takes the exhibition history of Contemporary Art of the Non-Aligned Countries (from hereon, referred to as Non-Aligned) as one of its points of departure. Several works from the 1995 exhibition are re-exhibited in The Allies Who Can’t Say No, thus enabling this essay to juxtapose and weave together the temporal discourse of the Non-Aligned exhibition with the narratives of several historical artworks and archival research projects that Grace included in her exhibition. The aim of this essay is to offer a reading of how the intellectual legacy of the Non-Aligned exhibition engages with and reflects the artistic motivation of the South in other temporal and spatial contexts.
--
Tulisan ini mengeksplorasi wacana temporal pameran Seni Rupa Kontemporer Negara-Negara Non-Blok dengan mengulas momen yang diciptakan pameran ini di Jakarta, era historis yang melingkupinya saat diadakan pada 1995, dan logika temporal yang dikonseptualisasinya dari perspektif Selatan. Karya kuratorial Grace Samboh, Para Sekutu yang Tidak Bisa Berkata Tidak, menjadikan pameran Seni Rupa Kontemporer Negara-Negara Non-Blok sebagai salah satu titik berangkatnya. Beberapa karya dari pameran Non-Blok ditampilkan kembali dalam Para Sekutu Yang Tidak Bisa Berkata Tidak, sehingga memungkinkan tulisan ini untuk menyandingkan dan menjahit wacana temporal pameran Non-Blok dengan narasi beberapa karya bersejarah dan proyek berbasis riset arsip yang dikurasi Grace untuk pamerannya. Tulisan ini ingin menawarkan pembacaan atas bagaimana warisan intelektual pameran Non-Blok berpapasan dan berpantulan dengan motivasi artistik Selatan dalam lintasan ruang dan waktu lainnya.
encounters between the contesting ideologies and interests of the emancipated artists-citizens,
the government and the capitalist corporate. In the first decade of post-Reformasi era, groups
of Yogyakarta’s street artists have been exploring street art as means for activating community
engagement and political involvement. Alas, big corporations, with the blessings from the
municipal authority, have devalued street art by co-opting it for vulgar advertising. Street wall-
-the canvas of the commons—becomes the site where the visual struggle of street artists
against the commercialization of public infrastructure distinctly appears.
Beyond the aesthetico-political resilience at play in the street walls of Yogyakarta,
several artists groups and networks have also initiated performative interventions along the city
streets to provoke discussions around the massive construction of malls and hotels, which has
caused agrarian conflict and socio-environmental problems over the past decade. Some art
projects discussed in this paper are also noteworthy for creating spaces for critical knowledge
production through history from below and alternative mapping methods in order to counter
the hegemonic vision of state-capitalist urban planning.
This paper attempts to ruminate on questions around the relationship between the
aesthetics and the politics of reclaiming public spaces by analyzing urban art practices in
Yogyakarta. In what ways art projects in urban setting reflect local social conditions two
decades after 1998 Reformasi? How does art community connect to other social forces in the
12
on-going project of urbanity? What politics does the aesthetic ideology of urban art enable?
What are the limitations and challenges of art practices that were shaped by the will for
participatory democracy?
Making Use of Politics: Urban Poor Movement
In setting up an encounter between Althusser and Deleuze’s philosophy of science, the dissertation includes a French biologist, Jacques Monod (1910-1976) into discussion. In 1965, together with François Jacob and André Lwoff, Monod received the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. Besides that, Monod is also an acclaimed writer on the philosophy of science, as his book Chance and Necessity (1970) gained great success in France. Both Althusser and Deleuze, in different ways and for different aims, have appropriated Monod’s work in molecular biology for their own projects. By using Monod as a common referential point to limit the discussion of Althusser and Deleuze’s epistemology, we shall see the similarity and difference of their new materialist philosophical practices.