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Tricks today truth tomorrow
Skyscrapers by Wisnuaji Putu
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Skyscrapers by Wisnuaji Putu.
The 2013 Salihara-Tourism and Creative Economy Ministry National Competition for Three-Dimensional Works was finalized in November and the winners, along with the finalists, now have their works on display at the Salihara Gallery in Pasar Minggu, South Jakarta, following the grand opening on Saturday of an exhibition titled 'In Between'.
With materials ranging from bubble wrap to record players, the competition applauds artists under 35 for using those materials in original ways to reflect social issues. The works are on display from Feb. 9 to 28.
One of the jury-choice winners, Tisa Granicia, opted for violence as her social concept yet, paradoxically, chose to utilize the seemingly harmless material of plastic bags.
Tisa's knitted plastic bag exhibit incorporates a 9-mm handgun and speaks of Indonesia's bureaucratic power, which she considers monumental but fake, strong but weak, and mighty but coquettish.
'The patterns and act of knitting are linked to the effort of reestablishing, or intertwining one by one, the hopes and dreams of this country,' she said in describing her work.
Hanky Panky: Hanky Panky by Faisal Habibi.
The exhibition's curator, Asikin Hasan, refers to her work as a pinnacle of environmental decay as she matched a deadly weapon with plastic waste.
Essentially, the exhibition sports plenty of industrial objects as works of art, creating a kind of accessibility that highlights social relations and power structures.
First-prize winner Faisal Habibi won the judges over with his work, Hanky Panky, which challenges the form and function of industrial objects. The definitive shape of a stool was revamped by Faisal to scrutinize human reliance on such objects.
'We cannot avoid the basic idea of a chair, even when it has lost its use as a 'place to sit',' Faisal said.
Receiving a cash prize of Rp 50 million (US$4,173), Faisal employed limited colors and a basic concept; however, it successfully touched the heart of the issue with its hanky panky stool legs.
In contrast, Octora, a fine art and design graduate from Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), flirted with danger as she turned to stilettos for her second-prize success. Her work, titled Commando Girl, employs nickel-plated metal and a custom-made knife to recreate the shape of a woman's high-heeled shoes.
The sense gained by the use of such harsh materials was a mixture of aggression and vulnerability.
'Through the knife-shaped stilettos used to support a woman's feet, I wanted to convey the tension between aggression and vulnerability,' Octora wrote in her biography for the exhibition's catalog.
Asikin compared the outstanding results to concepts in Marchel Duchamp's iconic piece, Fountain (1917), implying that the role of the subject in visual art was one to be questioned. He also quoted Duchamp, who once said: 'I tell them that the tricks of today are the truths of tomorrow.'
'The spirit of revolution triggered by Duchamp burned the spirit; mainly among young people in different places of the world. It also reached our country,' Asikin wrote in his introduction, 'Beyond Sculptures', in the winner's catalog.
Third-prize winner Budi Adi Nugroho exposes the removal of context in art with his piece, Pressed Junk, a concept similar to Duchamp's.
There remain large gaps between the hopes and dreams of Indonesia's young and reality, which visual art can sometimes express and reflect better than words.
Touching on violence, bureaucracy, the environment, power and various other social issues, the rise of young Indonesian artists is a promising one.
The competition, which was organized by the Salihara Community with the support of the Tourism and Creative Economy Ministry, the Goethe-Institut and Louis Vuitton Indonesia, awarded all-inclusive round-flight trips to Berlin to the top three winners.
The writer is an intern at The Jakarta Post.
' Photos by Bianca Winataputri
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