On Disneyland Series, 2023
in these paintings, I use images from Disneyland to represent Bali from my eyes. For some of us Disneyland is like a magical place where fantasy becomes true. This actually has its reason, Disneyland is a place that is constructed around the ideal world, where everyone is friendly and happy, animals are tamed and a place where hopes and dreams can potentially come true. This reminds me somehow of the old image of Bali, how foreigners came and built their own ideal paradise on the island. Disney themed pictures are chosen with bright colors because they play with our senses. Many of the buildings seem very tall, but are actually built using forced perspective in order to squish more buildings into one area, while still maintaining the ocular mirage. Another example, if it’s a hot day outside and you go into one of the ice cream shops to cool down or take a break, that cold air is going to be blasting so you feel so cold you buy something to keep you warm from one of the nearby shops. This circle makes you keep spending your money while maintaining the illusion of a happy place. The same things also apply to tourism in Bali. How excellent the service here doesn't make you realize how capitalism has changed the face of Bali itself. Disneyland here also symbolises the need to escape the world into a sweeter one. By presenting imaginary as more realistic than reality itself, Disneyland draws visitors into the world of escapism and happiness achieved through simulation; it makes the troubles of the real world less relatable.
R U Ur Avatar?
This series talks about multi persona and identity, how some of us have multiple personalities when facing different persons and multiple accounts on social media. I, myself love to role-play as this cool, sexy girl on my other Instagram account leading people to believe I have a nice life just for fun. Blurring the friction between the meta-verse and the reality of ourselves in the real world. I also edited my face into famous influences and celebrities on these paintings as a way to imagine what it is like to be like them. The Y2K aspects are related to style; how is right now on the rise. Just like identity, trends are ever changing just like our view on ourselves.
Prozac Girls
Prozac Girls is inspired by the movie Prozac Nation. This body of work depicts a “conversation” with a journal and poetry between 2 people with mental disorders. The act of repeatedly taking the pills is a social commentary on the antidepressant generation (Millennials), how many of us are overprescribed by xanax, risperidone and other stuff to numb our feelings. By breaking the glasses it mirrors my tendency to break things when my depressive episode hits as I am bipolar. Overall, this performance speaks largely on my 4 years long battle with mental disorders and melancholia.
LInk to Performance: https://youtu.be/oB3QoCwI1N0
Vivienne and Mary
Referenced from a behind the scene photo of Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette. It’s a social commentary on how women are expected to act like a “queen”, classy, pretty and having good manners; almost pure. The posture of Kirsten Dunst, the actress behind Marie Antoinette is all against it. Not to justify her controversial actions in the french revolution but the aspect on how in the movie she was adamant to have a child with king Louis XV at first, until she received a letter from her mother, Maria Theresa, the Holy Roman Empress, warning her that an unconsummated marriage could be easily annulled. This shows that women were and some are still seen as just reproduction machines; like white rabbits. If you look closely, the movie tried to tell a different look of story of the most misunderstood and abused woman in history, from her birth in Imperial Austria to her later life in France.
As for the second painting, it depicts a British fashion model Sarah Stockbridge on the catwalk at the Vivienne Westwood Spring/Summer 1991 fashion show in Paris, France, September 1990. Vivienne Westwood was known to send models down the runway wearing underwear as outerwear. In 4 decades of her career she changed how people dress and got women to be more ‘expressive’. Just like art, Vivienne Westwood believes that clothing should be charged with a physical presence, should provoke a reaction, should make ourselves and the observer feel uncomfortable. This painting also talks about identity, where people now can ‘insert’ a persona online or pretend in real life. Just like fashion, our identity changes like trend in this digital world we have this thing called multi persona. Overall, as the title said Ode To Vivienne Westwood is dedicated to the later designer who was famous for her visual expression to punk but also women empowerment.
On Multiple Tabs
I gathered various pictures from the internet. In my previous method of creating art, I made digital sketches first; all planned from the start. Otherwise, for these artworks I did not plan anything beforehand, therefore, I just simply paint them however I want. These artworks are inspired by the infinite information intakes preceded by social media. I called these “On Multiple Tabs” since they remind me of numerous tabs that some of us left when opening a browser.
By merging several paintings into one painting I want to create some kind of visual distortion that still creates harmony. The reason I took images from the internet is because of the post-realism and post-digital phenomenon of this contemporary time, the impact that digital contrivance has on us; how the algorithm decides what contents you see and in what order. We see images and advertisements that sometimes do not relate to the contents we are searching for. Thus, also how I feel when creating these artworks, like a DJ I remix and curate what my audiences want to see from my art. This also connects with visual attention-deficit/hyperactivity that some of us suffer since we are exposed to many visuals through the so-called internet platform. Additionally, the sudden change in technique and visuals in my newest paintings is also related to my eyes disorder (vitreous opacity) where I suffer from light sensitivity making me unable to paint with details and high colour precision.
The way I will sew different canvases into one is in the same essence, that there’s a parallel tension in memory; how we choose to remember or to forget. To attain something ideal is something that is impossible like attaining perfection, but in the process we actually try to reach a sense of balance. In the end, memory, the subject of time (temporality), and post reality (the internet) have the same common ground in which we deconstruct a memory or when we make a mental picture of the future. In which, the nature of memory is not so objective, there’s always a shift, a modification with new layers added, tinting whenever we recall something. Even a camera has its own subjectivity, either from its angle from which we shoot a certain object or a moment. While what I mentioned by post reality here is specifically referring to cyberspace, cyberspace gives a sense of reality and control to a certain degree for representation.
