Courtesy of Nadi Gallery

Bolak Balik in Bahasa Indonesia means inside - outside. This costume is made out of buffalo leather, which is mostly used for creating shadow puppets, and is inspired by Javanese philosophy in the traditional performing arts. It is believed that there is good in a bad character and a bad in a good character. Bad and Good need each other, they are connected and can swap their positions.

(Courtesy of www.mellajaarsma.com)

From series of two costumes ‘SARA-swati I, II'. I made this work in 2000, during the reformation period, just after president Suharto had resigned after 32 years in power. Especially in the beginning of the reformation period, with the new-found freedom of the press and expression, many people started to point accusing fingers at each other. You are right, you are wrong, you are corrupt, etc. At the same time, it was considered to be very impolite to point at someone with your finger. Saraswati is the Hindu goddess of knowledge and fights in the Javanese traditional dance performances against the powerful warrior princess Srikandhi. In 2000, there were many riots and outbreaks of violence between the Indonesian militaries and Moslem and Christian communities in the Maluccan islands and ethnic tensions in Kalimatan. A new term appeared in the newspapers, connecting these tensions: SARA - an abbreviation of Suku, Agama, Ras, Antar-golongan, which means Tribe, Religion, Race, Inter-group. For the title of this work, I connected this SARA with the goddess Saraswati.

(Courtesy of www.mellajaarsma.com)

Berasal dari koleksi slide IVAA

Berasal dari koleksi slide IVAA

Courtesy of Nadi Gallery

Berasal dari koleksi slide IVAA

Foto berasal dari katalog koleksi Perpustakaan IVAA.

Fighting and struggling are a part of human nature. They help us learn, search for balance. Horns are used for fighting as well as for protection. When the sliced horns are linked together, they look like an armour.

(Courtesy of www.mellajaarsma.com)

When two words in the Javanese or Indonesia language are reversed, they can signify meanings that are almost opposite to each other. ‘ Londo Ngemis ' means foreign beggar and ‘ Ngemis Londo ' means begging from foreigners . ‘ Gila Bule ' means crazy about foreigners , and ‘ Bule Gila ', crazy foreigners .
By cutting these words out of buffalo horn plates, I question my own residence as a Dutch person in this hybrid feudal society of Java, where every day I must deal with the stereotyped roles of the rich foreigner and the foreigner as colonialist and explorer. The work is also about positioning ‘the native' and ‘the ethnic/foreigner', and the acknowledgement that the relative positions of these groups could be reversed, depending on their surroundings. This work is related to a previous installation I made called ‘From Pets to Pest', when I brought squirrel skins from Java to Bangkok . These squirrels were killed by the farmers near Yogyakarta because they are pests, but I sewed them around the trees in a small park in the middle of Bangkok where people came everyday to feed the beloved squirrels living in the trees.

(Courtesy of www.mellajaarsma.com)

I chose my materials very carefully because different materials affect the meanings and contexts in my work. With “The follower”  (2002) , I want to show the plurality of Indonesian society. I made this cloak after the Bali bomb in 2002, when Indonesia was labeled ‘a Moslem terrorist country' by international media. I collected embroidered emblems of many different organizations; from sports clubs, social clubs to political parties and religious communities.  I sewed these emblems side-by-side, at times, one on top of the other and intertwined them to create another skin, to illustrate the moderate habitat of Indonesia's hybrid culture.

(Courtesy of www.mellajaarsma.com)

[courtesy IVAA]

Karya ini berupa kostum yang dibuat dari seragam militer bekas dan rumput laut.

Karya ini berupa hiasan kepala dari obat-obatan tradisional (akar tanaman) dan kuda laut kering.

A military mission is not only about sending troops of warriors, but also food and medicine. “Who's the Hunter? Who's the Killer? Who's the Feeder? And who's the Healer? These are the underlying questions from my work ‘The Warrior', ‘The Feeder' and ‘The Healer' (2003). This work was produced during the beginning of the Iraqi war. At the same time Indonesian militaries were entering the province Aceh to ‘finish' the independence movement. It represents human's inevitable connection to killing, healing and feeding. The ‘warrior' costume is made out of used military outfits, worn by Indonesian soldiers (TNI), cut into strings and mixed with seaweed created into a new warrior cloak. The lower seaweed part hangs into a pan and is boiled into a miso soup served to the audience. The ‘feeder' is made out of squids and squid soup, the ‘healer' is from Chinese and Indonesian traditional medicines that are cooked into a ‘jamu'.

(Courtesy of www.mellajaarsma.com)

A military mission is not only about sending troops of warriors, but also food and medicine. “Who's the Hunter? Who's the Killer? Who's the Feeder? And who's the Healer? These are the underlying questions from my work ‘The warrior', ‘The feeder' and ‘the healer' (2003). This work was produced during the beginning of the Iraqi war. At the same time Indonesian militaries were entering the province Aceh to ‘finish' the independence movement. It represents human's inevitable connection to killing, healing and feeding. The ‘warrior' costume is made out of used military outfits, worn by Indonesian soldiers (TNI), cut into strings and mixed with seaweed created into a new warrior cloak. The lower seaweed part hangs into a pan and is boiled into a miso soup served to the audience. The ‘feeder' is made out of squids and squid soup, the ‘healer' is from Chinese and Indonesian traditional medicines that are cooked into a ‘jamu'.

(Courtesy of www.mellajaarsma.com)

Rubber Time I was made at the site of Lunagangga, a former rubber plantation in Sri Lanka on the plot of the well-known architect, Jeffrey Bawa. Being Dutch, I realized that the land was also connected with my colonial history, connecting the Netherlands , Sri Lanka and Indonesia , where I live. In Rubber Time I ( Rubber Time II was made in Indonesia in Oct 2003), three persons lay on the ground in-between the rubber trees, covered by veils of rubber tree seed-cases, smoked rubber and dried pored rubber. They seemed to have been lying there forever, in a condition between sleeping, praying and death.

(Courtesy of www.mellajaarsma.com)

Dipamerkan dalam Pameran "Menimbang Dunia Perempuan" 2004. [courtesy IVAA]

Foto karya courtesy seniman.

Performance di Via-via Cafe, Yogyakarta.

Creating shelters is related to the history of mankind. Shelters are human habitats, physical and psychological spaces found all around the world that provide protection and comfort. Civilization has layered the shelter with many other meanings related to wealth, status, religion, family life, notions of community, and privacy. The shelter, or the house, is an extension of our own body, clothing, and personal space. This space reflects the development from being into well-being, showing the targets in the lives of humans to settle and enrich themselves. This aim for prosperity and well-being is rooted in our genes and psyches. My work, “Targets of Prosperity”, shows different aspects of these secure mental spaces. I used the idea of the Buddha of Prosperity, in which the ritual of giving money to the fat bellied Buddha promises wealth and protection of the giver. On the inside of a gold-plated shelter is a video of myself posing as a beggar, sticking the received money on my belly and under my breasts.

(Courtesy of www.mellajaarsma.com)

The word ‘Asal' is originally from the Arabic language and has traveled to Indonesia , where it is part of our daily vocabulary. “Asal dari mana? ”, “Where are you from?”. This a common question asked, not only to me as a Dutch person living in Indonesia , but is often used as an opening phrase in a conversation. “Asal” means 'authentic', and is used to question origin.

‘Asal' is about the possibilities of mobility and shifting, like words traveling the globe, or like the images of clouds and water I found in Persian paintings from the Timurid, (Safavid period, 14 – 18 th century AD). This cloud shape has developed similarly in Chinese paintings and ceramics of the same era, as well as the Mega Mendung motif, a batik motif developed in the sultanate of Cirebon ( Northern Java ) that is still in production today. Through mysticism, common belief, and trade ruling the seas, those cloud images were easily exchanged and cannot be claimed to have ‘origininated' in any one nation.

(Courtesy of www.mellajaarsma.com)

I made this work especially for the exhibition 'Asal' at Etamad Gallery in Tehran . Spying and peeping is what we do when we are allowed to show so little of our body parts. Women count as half a witness. Mitra, an Iranian artist who drove me through the streets of Tehran in the most aggressive traffic that I have ever experienced, told this to me.

(Courtesy of www.mellajaarsma.com)

‘Shelter me' is a work that parallels garment and architectural constructions, or ‘flexible housing'. There is a basic need for a roof over your head to protect you from the sun and rain of the tropical climate. The roof is the most important part, defining a given space physically, as well as spiritually, like a temple incasing a vision / belief. The shelter is the minimal construction needed for protection, not yet the shape of a house, but directly related to the proportions of the human body. The work "Shelter me" is about the possibilities of mobility and motion. Like words, images as tattoos, and architectural design travel the globe. Not only currently, but for centuries, art forms and languages have been transported and exchanged through mysticism, common beliefs, and trade. These shelters also refer to the current global reality of migration. I placed these shelters in different sites in Yokohama during the Yokohama Triennale in 2005. The documentation (video) of the shelters and the sites in Yokohama became an important part of the installation and is shown together with the shelters in the exhibition space.

(Courtesy of www.mellajaarsma.com)