Past Solo Exhibition
PRINT SCREEN: Melati Suryodarmo 10.09.2022 — 09.10.2022
Information
Event has ended
10 September – 9 October 2022
Location: ArtSpace @ HeluTrans
About The Exhibition
Our second edition of PRINT SCREEN features Indonesian artist Melati Suryodarmo, running from 10 September – 9 October 2022. Known for her durational, physically-demanding performances, Suryodarmo finds a new receptacle for translating her artistic concerns through her print and paper explorations. Taking an investigative and excavational approach towards lost spaces and the histories they carry, many of her STPI works retain the traces of an abandoned site where she draws out the psychological aspects of forgotten spaces—and with it, the slow fading of an existence and memories. Yet, through translating elements of the site into her works, Suryodarmo powerfully evokes an affective relationship between memory, the body and site, foregrounding notions of longing and loss.
Each presentation is accompanied by a screening room that aims to expand one’s understanding of the artists’ practice, through highlighting the domains which they are renowned for. For this edition, Suryodarmo’s performance documentations are screened on loop, with one performance being presented per week. Through viewing her print and paper works and the videos in tandem, one can come to better appreciate how the psychological and bodily aspects of her practice inform the artist’s explorations while on residency with STPI.
About the artist
Melati Suryodarmo
Residency in 2018
Melati Suryodarmo (1969, born and based in Surakarta, Indonesia) examines the relationships and boundaries between the self and its environments—cultural, societal, political—through her primary medium of performance. Drawing from the body as a vessel for memories, lived experiences and perpetual transformation, as well as a mediator between external and internal worlds, Suryodarmo explores universal themes such as love, failure, alienation and belonging. She has been recognised as one of Indonesia’s most significant contemporary artists since the late 1990s.
Born to prolific Javanese dancers, Suryodarmo’s early immersion in traditional movement and meditation practices informed her later training in the Japanese dance-theatre form butoh and performance art in Germany. These experiences honed her acute sensitivity towards the capacity of the mind and body, enabling her to perform often strenuous durational pieces. In I’m A Ghost in My Own House (2012), Suryodarmo situates herself within a vast mound of charcoal which she continually collects, crushes and grinds into dust for twelve consecutive hours. Through this, the artist physically and symbolically strips away energy from both the charcoal and her body in a process of liberation, catharsis and destruction. The work reflects her feelings of displacement following her return to Indonesia after decades of living in Germany.
Suryodarmo obtained her BFA and MFA in Performance Art from the Braunschweig University of Art in 1991 and 1992 respectively. Her work is found in major collections including Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Akili Museum of Art, Jakarta; Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museum MACAN, Jakarta; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; National Gallery Singapore; Singapore Art Museum; M+, Hong Kong; Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki; and Tate Collection, London.
Notable solo exhibitions include Tidak Apa-Apa (2024), Kyoto Art Center, Kyoto; Fracture (2023), Jendela Visual Arts Space, Singapore; Passionate Pilgrim (2023), Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; I'm a Ghost in My Own House (2022), Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht; Why Let the Chicken Run? (2020), Museum MACAN, Jakarta; Loneliness in the Boundaries (2006), Cemeti Art House, Yogyakarta. The artist has also participated in major international festivals including In Our Veins Flow Ink and Fire (2022), 5th Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kochi; Escape Routes (2020), 2nd Bangkok Art Biennale;
We Do Not Dream Alone (2020), 1st Asia Society Triennial, New York; An Atlas of Mirrors (2016), 5th Singapore Biennale; APT8 (2015), 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane; and So Close Yet So Far Away (2009), 3rd International Incheon Women Artists Biennale.
Suryodarmo had her residency at the STPI Workshop in 2018, resulting in the exhibition Memento Mori (2019–2020).
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