| The Fitting Room |
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November 15 - December 6, 2009 Solo Exhibition by Mella Jaarsma Opening: Sunday, November 15, 2009 | 4.00 pm at Selasar Sunaryo Art Space Officiated by Slamet Rahardjo Djarot Curated by Agung Hujatnikakennong Artist Talk : Thursday, November 26, 2009 | 3.00 pm at Bale Handap, Selasar Sunaryo Art Space Mella Jaarsma's artistic practice has become a microscope for examining the various aspects of a complex life. Her works are always provocative and subversive - inviting viewers to rethink social stereotypes, such as those concerning religion, social class, communal identity, ethnicity, morality, tradition, political ideology, etc. Mella makes her artwork a creative encounter that sees human life as a dynamic, ongoing process of constructing meaning that is, at the same time, fluctuating and relative because it is bound to space and time. Mella gives form to space and time through a hybrid situation and experience. Born in the Netherlands, then moving to Indonesia and living for 25 years in the country, she truly understands the variety of paradoxical perspectives of identity. In her everyday life, she experiences tension between defending her authentic self on the one hand, while making unavoidable changes in her lifestyle on the other hand. In addition to this very personal experience, the influences of the environment she lives in in Yogyakarta contribute to making her works full of unexpected puzzles of meaning. The issues of the 'body', 'coverings', and the relationship between the two with 'identity' have been the primarily focus of Mella Jaarsma's attention for quite awhile. Since the early 1980s, Mella's artistic journey has been colored by exploration of drawing, photography, painting, objects, video, and installations, through performance art. Despite this variety of media, we can see how the 'body' and 'coverings' occupy the central position of her focus. Mella presents the human body and its coverings physically—in various ways and in various forms (costumes/clothes, veils, houses, tents, shelters). However, in addition to this, she also thinks about the body and coverings in a more basic and philosophical way, then uses her works to link to broader social and cultural issues as a way to initiate new dialog and stimulate new ideas. Featuring selected works that she has created since the early 1990s, the exhibition Fitting Room positions Mella's works in the framework of the issue of cultural identity. Fitting Room is a metaphor about the space for negotiation that is very subjective. In a fitting room, the individual has full, unhampered personal authority to dress him/herself. In a fitting room, one can experiment, try new clothes that had previously been considered to be unsuitable for their body, then can change to other clothes. The fitting room can be used as a place to test one's authority to finding 'themselves'. It is a space that can provide freedom to anyone to play any 'role'—although this freedom in the end is always limited by the available choices.(Agung Hujatnikajennong-Exhibition Curator) |