A video says it all: Footage from the colonial period has become the source of inspiration for Otty Widasari’s art exhibition titled “The Ones Who Are Being Controlled” at Dia.Lo.Gue Artspace in Jakarta.

Artist Otty Widasari has again rattled the Indonesian art scene with her recent art exhibition, “The Ones Who Are Being Controlled”.

Entering the exhibition room at Dia.Lo.Gue. Artspace Jakarta, visitors may be puzzled by the scattered paintings lying around on the ground, leaving the walls bare and empty, marked only by quotes in black font.

“What we are talking [here] is nothing but the opportunity of a medium, where a producer has the authority to create his or her own constructions that are not subject to any rules. We get a new understanding of who is looking at whom,” Otty Widasari, the artist, wrote on one of the empty walls.

Otty is back again on the art scene, this time in her hometown, one year after a successful exhibition in Yogyakarta. Titled “The Ones Who Are Being Controlled”, the exhibition is a sequel to last year’s “The Ones Who Looked at The Presence” at Ark Galerie, Yogyakarta.

For the sequel, Otty continues her reading of colonial film archives, which then she translates into other media, mostly paintings. This time, Otty’s paintings are based on archives produced between 1917 and 1930, while in the previous exhibition, Otty’s work was based on old footage from 1912 to 1914.

Inspired: These two paintings are based on images from a clip in a colonial video archive.

However, even though Otty has studied colonial archives from a longer period for the second exhibition, she has produced fewer paintings, showcasing just 55 works, around half the number of the previous exhibition.

Otty explained that one of the reasons behind the reduction in the number of works in the second exhibition was the deeper analysis involved. For her second attempt, Otty said she tried to scrutinize the power relation between the camera operator and the object.

“In the first exhibition, I try to focus on the existence of the camera as new technology and people’s reaction when they are being recorded, but now I try to see the power relation between the camera owners and the people they record,” Otty told The Jakarta Post recently.

Despite the differences, certain elements have been kept, including Otty’s distinctive style and approach to creating and exhibiting, once more shaking up the Indonesian art globe.

Her first art exhibition has impressed many art critics and lovers. Prominent curator Amir Sidharta lauded Otty’s artwork for its “simplicity and sincerity while carrying an idea that transcends space, time and history”.

“We set up my first exhibition in Yogyakarta as a challenge against the established pictorial art in Yogyakarta,” she said.

Otty’s painting style, resembling rough scribbled sketches in plain and basic colors, is very different from the majority of painters in Yogyakarta, known for their pure and technically flawless work.

But her distinctive style has attracted the attention of many art lovers, as seen in the congratulatory comments posted on social media during her previous exhibition.

At first glance, there is nothing very special about Otty’s paintings. All her paintings, from both the first and the second exhibitions, look very much the same in terms of style, technique and ambiance.

Explaining her style, Otty said she did not focus on making beautiful art because her purpose was to document video archives.

Born in 1973, Otty is an old face in the Indonesian art scene, with lengthy involvement in many organizations and cultural activities.

Simple but meaningful: Otty’s painting style of rough sketches in plain colors has impressed many art critics.

A woman of many talents, Otty is an artist, filmmaker, writer, curator and media activist. She is one of the founders of Forum Lenteng, a community development project utilizing different media to analyze social-cultural problems.

She has been making documentary films since 2002 and her latest documentary feature, Naga yang Berjalan Di Atas Air (The Dragon That Walks On The Water, 2012) was presented at an international documentary film festival in South Korea.

As an artist, her artwork has been displayed in various exhibitions in different countries including Germany and South Korea. In the past two years, she has received two invitations to participate in artist-in-residence programs in the Netherlands and Singapore.

Her one-month residency in the Netherlands in 2014 with curator Manshur Zikri was the beginning of her latest art project translating colonial footage into different media from video to paintings

“If archive is a knowledge then I see this footage as our heritage that they took away from us […] through my artwork, I try to get it back […] and reconstruct the footage,” she explained.

Manshur said he saw Otty’s art projects as an attempt to disrupt the cultural construction created by colonial video archives.

“The solid [cultural] construction from the archives has been destroyed and deconstructed by Otty through her art projects,” he said.

Otty shocked the art scene with her brave, distinctive and deconstructive approach to painting in “The Ones Who Looked At The Presence” in Yogyakarta.

On the floor: A visitor takes a picture of Otty’s paintings displayed on the floor of the exhibition room at Dia.Lo.Gue Artspace in Jakarta.

And it seems that Otty has tried to adopt a similar approach for The Ones Who Are Being Controlled. This time, her exhibition also shocks the audience through a unique art display. The paintings are displayed on the ground to disrupt not only the space but also the visitors, creating tension and attention that the artist is expecting.

The Ones Who Are Being Controlled
Otty Widasari solo exhibition
Dia.Lo.Gue Artspace
Jl. Kemang Selatan No.99A
Jakarta 12730
April 4–May 6

— Photos by JP/Ika Krismantari

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