Suryodarmo is a versatile artist but is mainly known for her compelling performances. The title of the exhibition comes from Suryodarmo’s twelve-hour performance I am a Ghost in My Own House. During this performance, Suryodarmo uses a stone mortar to crush charcoal into dust on a table. She literally exhausts herself, but at the same time she also exhausts the energy potential of the charcoal.
“For Suryodarmo, pulverising the charcoal symbolises her tiredness and physical exhaustion, which are coupled with her being uprooted and her return to Indonesia after living in Germany for many years. Hence the title ‘I am a Ghost in My Own House.’”—Philippe Pirotte, guest curator.
The works in the exhibition show the versatility of her artistry. Alongside performances, you also see video installations, photography and drawings. Her work is generally inspired by her performances, where her body and the notion of time are important elements.
Time is essential to her work and the experience of it, as it transforms the performer, the audience and the space. Through aspects of her work like duration, inertia, observation, introspection and interaction, she aims to break through the short attention span of our individual, passive consumerism.
Suryodarmo trained at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig, in Germany. A chance encounter brought her into contact with the famous Anzu Furukawa, with whom she studied butoh (a Japanese theatre form that combines different disciplines and techniques, such as dance, performance and movement), following which she took classes in performance art with the renowned Marina Abramović.
Suryodarmo’s performances reflect her own ideas and cultural background, and concern the relationship between the human body, the defining cultural traditions to which the body belongs and the context in which it lives. She focuses on concepts like home, spirituality, family and personal history, interweaving them with socio-political, activist and mainly feminist ideas. Partly as a result of politics and gender discrimination, her work has long gone unnoticed. Through her indefatigable efforts to forge connections between art and artists and society, Suryodarmo has become a key figure in the cultural world of Indonesia. Nowadays, her name is widely known and acknowledged in South-East Asia and elsewhere, yet unaccountably her work has not received a great number of international awards or solo exhibitions.
at Bonnefanten, Maastricht
until October 30, 2022