The Second Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art exhibition catalogue (APT2)

Language and the radical intentions constituting the works of Arahmaiani are a reflection of the totality of the artist herself. Her way of seeing comes from her experience of living in the streets for years, with a particular, critical point of view that alienated her from the sociocultural structure from which she came.The character of Arahmaiani's work is sharp, wild, humorous and challenging. This can be seen in the way she assembles ready-made or trivial found-objects to raise complex social issues through their construction. All of this is a trace of her unbounded journey. In this exhibition Arahmaiani is presenting an installation and performance piece entitled Nation for sale. When she was fourteen years old, Arahmaiani, born in Bandung to an educated, religious, middle class family, broke with tradition. She lived on the streets and mingled with the people she met there. This was extraordinary for life in Bandung, especially for a woman. As a consequence, Arahmaiani was stigmatised. Despite this, Arahmaiani let her feet take her where they would go. She let her mind wander into unexplored, hidden places to freely question and rearticulate the myths of her society and culture. By living like a nomad on the streets, Arahmaiani experienced the revelation of stark social reality. Street-life enabled her to see social injustice under 'the rule of the jungle', especially the cultural bias against women. She saw clearly the exploitation of nature and culture caused by capitalism, industrialisation and 'plasticisation', all of which have become her nightmares. In addition, Arahmaiani's experience of being under military house arrest in 1983 while studying at the Bandung Institute of Technology helped shape her views. Arahmaiani was arrested while creating an installation work in the street with three other friends because the art work was considered subversive. It was this memory which emerged in her work, Offerings from A to Z 1995. Arahmaiani is also concerned with what she sees as the cultural imperialism of rich industrial countries, an imperialism ironically welcomed without reserve by the people of the nation. All this is made possible through preconditioning, wrapped in the glamorous and erotic language of advertising and decorated with physical development jargon. Such a critical view is shown in Arahmaiani's installation Sacred Coke. This installation, in which she wrapped the tip of a Coca-Cola bottle in a condom, was presented in the 'Exhibition of Contemporary Art from the Non-Aligned Countries' in Jakarta, 1995. Nation for sale expresses Arahmaiani's loathing of seeing the local people's languages and cultures suppressed by a popular culture sophisticatedly I AIIAIIIIIIAII (Yani) Artistic Praxis of an Indonesian Nomadic Artist Coke circle 1995 Installation andperformance at Claremont Art School,Perth engineered by sociocultural research, so that popular images and icons are seductively thrust into people's minds to manipulate their behaviour. This piece is actually a metaphor for the reality of the region where Arahmaiani is from, where many people have experienced cultural displacement since farm lands have been converted into huge factories established by industrial nations. As a result, the people are transformed from traditional farmers into coolies or machine operators. Women become commodities. The children are brought up with the mentality of their parents, who have become foreigners in their own land. They gradually become the nuts and bolts of the capitalist industrial system. In the meantime, the mesmerising advertisements . make people unconscious that they are being made passive. Their culture is being transformed into a television-watching culture and so they are all too happy to imitate the language and way of life from industrial nations, the exporters of popular images.There are now those who colour their hair blond or wear thick leather jackets in the hot, humid climate. Moreover there are some people willing to have their slanted eyes operated on, so as to look like the models from the West. Based in Bandung, Indonesia In the meantime, the elite, the holders of the social and economic reins, continuously profit from the system; they guard and protect it and their way of life by spreading the myth with superficial political and scientific jargon, even justifying all of this through their religion. And, to Arahmaiani's horror, such a life is made sacred, defended all out until the selling of a nation simply does not matter. M.Dwi Marianto,Lecturer at the IndonesianInstitute of theArts(ISI), Yogyakarta, Indonesia A RT I s T s : so UT H AND sou T H- EA s T A s I A I 81