Arahmaiani
Indonesia, Tibet
Botany, Environmental Politics, Food Supply, Geopolitics, Permaculture, Urban Farming
Four people waving colourful flags in the street

Flag Project, 2007, Arahmaiani, Courtesy of the artist

Artist
Region
Indonesia, Tibet
Category
Risk, Resilience and Resistance
Topics
Botany, Environmental Politics, Food Supply, Geopolitics, Permaculture, Urban Farming
Methodology
Installation, Performance, Video
Projects
Biography
Conferences
Further Reading
Selected References

Arahmaiani

Arahmaiani (b. 1961, Indonesia) is one of Indonesia’s most respected and pioneering artists in the field of performance art. From the 1980’s, she has performed in many public spaces — even during the rule of an oppressive military regime. Though most known internationally known for her performance art, her creative work extends beyond the bounds of the artistic world, and into her environmental, religious and cultural activism. Her activism takes form in both her interactive performances and her community-based practice, bringing attention to subjects prevalent in Indonesia and to issues of violence against the environment on the Tibetan Plateau. Arahmaiani engages in community-based practices across a variety of groups including, Tibetan monks, an Islamic boarding school and participants from a range of countries and backgrounds. The nomadism of her life is reflected in her work, using her performances and focus on community participation as means of uniting people from different backgrounds and processing traumas brought about by the severance of people from their natural environments.

Arahmaiani’s work has been featured in over 100 solo and group exhibitions around the world notably Paradise Lost: Mourning of the World, Indonesian Pavilion, Venice Biennale (2003)’; Memory of Naature, SMAK Ghent Museum of Contemporary Art (2017); Bruised: Art Action & Ecology in Asia, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne (2019); Politics of Disaster: ender Environment & Religion, PAV (Parte Arte Pivente) Turin, Italy (2020); Re-Nature, Den Bosch, Netherland (2021); Documenta 15 – with Asia Art Archive Collective (2022); Flag Project, Istanbul Biennale (2022).

Projects

Flag Project
Memory of Nature

Flag Project

2006 - Present
People holding different flags beneath the Esplanade.

Arahmaiani, Flag Project, 2009, Singapore. Courtesy the artist.

 People holding flags.

Arahmaiani, Flag Project, 2009, Singapore. Courtesy the artist.

 8 flags held on the side of a temple by participants with words in different languages.

Arahmaiani, Flag Project, 2007, Central Java. Courtesy the artist.

 People holding flags and signs in various languages.

Arahmaiani, Flag Project, 2008, Shenzhen, China. Courtesy the artist.
Format/Medium
Performance

Arahmaiani's Flag Project began as a collaboration with the Anumarta Islamic boarding school in 2006. The Flag Project consists of colourful flags which contain single words or phrases written in the scripts and languages of the communities that Arahmaini works with, she has implemented this project in various communities in Yogyakarta, Central Java, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Japan, China and Tibet. In this performance incorporating a flag bearing the word guyub – the Javanese term for living harmoniously – Arahmaiani offers an original sound composition by Wukir Suryadi (Indonesia) as a “song for the plants.” She invites us all to respond to this offering and create our own songs for plants, inspired by mutual care and harmony.

The expansive and nomadic nature of the project gives visibility to linguistic, ethnic and cultural diversity, putting majority and minority languages on a par, while also highlighting the universal quality of the cultural concepts. In an interview, Arahmaiani explains that this community-based art project is built on "the intention and the goals of studying and developing collective creativity" through the implementation of an open art system that infinitely opens up the definition of art to ensure that it the form can configure inter-disciplinary characteristics [1][2][3].

[1] NTU CCA: https://ntu.ccasingapore.org/contributor/arahmaiani/
[2] Jurriëns, E. (2020). Gendering the environmental artivism: Ekofeminisme and Unjuk Rasa of Arahmaiani’s art. Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia, 4(2), 3–38. https://doi.org/10.1353/sen.2020.0006
[3] Arahmaiani: Flag. Creative Cowboy Films. (n.d.). https://www.creativecowboyfilms.com/blog_posts/arahmaiani-flag

Flag Project, Arahmaiani in collaboration with Jimmy Ong, 2006 -2021

Memory of Nature

2013 - 2020

Arahmaiani, Memory of Nature, 2013, Singapore. Courtesy the Artist.

 Box of dirt with a circular symbol carved into the dirt with 8 sections.

Arahmaiani, Memory of Nature, 2018, Yinchuan Biennale, China. Courtesy the Artist.
Format/Medium
Installation of wood, soil, plants, plastic sheet

Arahmaiani's work, Memory of Nature, a mandala made of soil and seeds, symbolises the universe and holds spiritual and ritual significance for Buddhists. Through this work Arahmaiani challenges the ways of seeing the past, present and future. Deconstructing the binary of good and bad, how can we embody the Buddhist worldview of interconnectedness? The mandala asks us to end exploitation in all our interactions with the world, to reach harmony including and especially our exploitation of nature.

Biography

A profile image of a lady in batik

Arahmaiani (b. 1961, Indonesia) is one of Indonesia’s most respected and pioneering artists in the field of performance art. From the 1980’s, she has performed in many public spaces — even during the rule of an oppressive military regime. Though most known internationally known for her performance art, her creative work extends beyond the bounds of the artistic world, and into her environmental, religious and cultural activism. Her activism takes form in both her interactive performances and her community-based practice, bringing attention to subjects prevalent in Indonesia and to issues of violence against the environment on the Tibetan Plateau. Arahmaiani engages in community-based practices across a variety of groups including, Tibetan monks, an Islamic boarding school and participants from a range of countries and backgrounds. The nomadism of her life is reflected in her work, using her performances and focus on community participation as means of uniting people from different backgrounds and processing traumas brought about by the severance of people from their natural environments. Arahmaiani’s work has been featured in over 100 solo and group exhibitions around the world notably,”Paradise Lost: Mourning of the World”, Indonesian Pavilion, Venice Biennale (2003)’; ”Memory of Naature” SMAK Ghent Museum of Contemporary Art (2017); “Bruised: Art Action & Ecology in Asia” RMIT Gallery, Melbourne (2019); “Politics of Disaster: ender Environment & Religion” PAV (Parte Arte Pivente) Turin, Italy (2020); “Re-Nature” Den Bosch, Netherland (2021); Documenta 15 – with Asia Art Archive Collective (2022); “Flag Project” Istanbul Biennale (2022).

Arahmaiani. Courtesy of the artist.

Conferences

Speaker | Embodied Histories - Entangled Communities. Southeast Asian and Western Approaches to Narratives and Performance Art, Hamburger Bahnof - Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart

Focus and Background of the Conference
"Performative arts, and performance art in the narrower sense, are characterised by media hybridity and interdisciplinary links that are associated with variable social contexts and polychronic art histories. The multifaceted mythological, literary and political histories in Southeast Asia and in the West also influence the embodied knowledge in the respective social communities in ways that extend beyond the performance practices and presentation methods. Of particular interest in this regard are the different temporalities, which often represent asymmetrical power structures, and the formation of transnational and transtemporal communities through performative events and practices.

Against this background, conference participants will pose questions about the curatorial, academic and institutional implications of these practices:

- How can performance art and performative artistic and social practices be collected, archived, exhibited, reflected upon, conveyed or transformed?
- Which role do narrative strategies play in conveying knowledge and experience?
- How can performative and curatorial approaches be combined?
- What can cultural institutions learn from narrative and performative practices with respect to their own diverse audiences?
- Can stereotypical patterns of hegemonic narratives be unlearned and which new experiences result?
How can diverse communities be reached, altered and possibly even constituted with these artistic practices?"

[1] Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, “Conference on ‘Embodied Histories’ from 13 to 14 June 2019,” www.smb.museum, June 4, 2019, https://www.smb.museum/en/whats-new/detail/performance-art-in-southeast-asia-conference-on-embodied-histories-from-13-to-14-june-2019/.

Further Reading

Wulan Dirgantoro, "Arahmaiani: Challenging the Status Quo," Afterall Journal, 21 September 2016

Anissa Rahadiningtyas, "Arahmaiani: Nomadic Reparation Projects, Environmentalism, and Global Islam," post MOMA, 21 August 2021

Nabila Giovanna W, "Midpoint: Arahmaiani," Art & Market, 16 March 2023

 

Selected Exhibitions

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2022 Flag Project (Turkish Version), Istanbul Biennale
2022 Documenta 15 - with Asia Art Archive Collective
2021 Re-Nature, Den Bosch, Netherland
2019 Bruised: Art, Action & Ecology in Asia, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, Australia
2015 “Violence No More”, Haus am Dom, Frankfurt
2014 Fertility of the Mind, Tyler Rollins Gallery, New York
2003 Venice Biennale