mythologies and change
This series is my homage to some of my favorite mythologies and tales from around the world. Since childhood, stories of deities, heroes and mortals have fascinated me with ceaseless wonders.
I explored the medium oil paint through a Realist style. Artists that I have learned from again and again are John William Waterhouse, John Everett Millais, Frida Kahlo and Serge Marshennikov, who meticulously paint the details of female figures and nature, and in doing so evoke compelling narratives of transcendence. While their works contain fantastic elements and poetic passion, their artistic styles entice the viewers into convincing life-like universes. In this series, I attempted to recreate emotions and associations that I received from encountering those literature and visual masterpieces. In order to do so, I frequently deviate from the classicist composition and experiment with the different perspectives through which I could project the characters, and further explore lighting and symbols to retell these stories. For my sculpture pieces that are more abstract, Rosalyn Driscoll, Paige Bradley and Mark Sweeney have inspired me the ways to play with light and spaces. Research on these artists’ artmaking processes have guided my own voyage, and have enabled me to risk new subjects and materials such as translucent drapery, twigs and techniques like grisaille.
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Change is everywhere I go - the whimsical weather of Jakarta, the colors that wash over the day, the intercepting courses of people on the streets. The concern for the fleetingness of beings is ancient in itself. Through accepting this vulnerability and transitoriness one soars to the immortal.
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lucy
2016
Acrylic and modeling paste on canvas
70 x 50 cm
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Inspired by Gustav Klimt's portrayal of female form through natural patterns in "Water Serpents II", "Danae", "Judith", I recreated a rhythm of geometricity and fluidity. Lucy casts her unwavering gaze through mathematical, biological and anthropological realms of time.
"Because being here amounts to so much, because all this Here and Now, so fleeting, seems to require us and strangely concern us. Us the most fleeting of all. Just once, everything, only for once. Once and no more. And we, too, once. And never again. But this having been once, though only once, having been once on earth—can it ever be cancelled?"
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The Duino Elegies, Rainer Maria Rilke
alice
2016
Oil on canvas
70 x 50 cm
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A modern Pandora, whose youthful inquisitiveness leads to perils and adventures.
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wyrd
2016
Oil on canvas
80 x 100 cm
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The origin of the word "weird" comes from a goddess of fate and the nurturer of Yggdrasil. How has fate taken the characteristics of being 'weird' in the Viking's imagination? Is she compassionate or apathetic? Here, is Wyrd fetching or returning the water of life?
enlightenment
2017
Wood
230 x 300 x 57 cm
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The Buddhist Enlightenment involves escaping the otherwise perpetual cycle of life and struggle. Inevitably, the enlightened sheds the illusion of the self and the world. The question is, what remains when renouncing all that we know of? Who escapes to where?
"This world of dew...
though a world of dew it remains,
still, even so..."
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Kobayashi Issa
white rose
2017
Photograph
55 x 46.5 cm
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Perched among the thorns
foams of milk cascading down
to crumble the earth
hesperia
2017
Oil on canvas
75 x 150 cm
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The caretaker of the garden of golden apples embraces the closing of another day, her hair billowing gently in the wind. An homage to Frida Kahlo's depiction of vivacious foliage, I attempted to enliven the tropical vegetation back home in Indonesia.
"The bird fights its way out of the egg.
The egg is the world.
Who would be born must first destroy a world."
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Demian, Herman Hesse
pandora
2017
Clay, acrylic and electric lamp
70 x 29 x 20 cm
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An epitome of femme fatale, Pandora's naive, childlike beauty draws a stark contract with the calamity that she is to bring to mankind. When changes occur, one is forced to face a dilemma of dueling values, of old and new. Nevertheless, change is inevitable. For this reason I wanted to suggest the life-giving nature of Pandora, one which may break her but simultaneously liberate her from her shell.
sibyl
2017
Oil on canvas
100 x 100 cm
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Through the narratives of different mythological figures that I depict, conflicting themes reoccur- youth and mortality, transience and remnants, rebellion and harmony. Sibyl watches youth slip by her like the sand in her hand that curses her with immortality.
hestia
2017
Oil on canvas
90 x 120 cm
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In the myth of Prometheus, mankind was bestowed with a gift that overpowered all other animalistic features. This story always begged a question for me: What was Hestia, keeper of the hearth, doing when Prometheus came to steal gods' fire? What if she, whom we merely know as being benign and docile, barely mentioned in the records, was the one to offer him the fire? And if so, did she anticipate all that characterizes us— arts, science, war, civilization—to follow?