Co-presented by the Queens Museum & freeDimensional
January 11, 2014, 6-9PM
Location: Project Reach NYC. 39 Eldridge Street, 4FL. New York NY, 10002
Performance by Arahmaiani
Screening of Erika Baglyas’s film Honestly featuring CM Rien Kuntari
Conversation with Arahmaiani & CM Rien Kuntari
1998, in the wake of the Asian financial crisis and the resignation of General Suharto after 32 years in power, was a tumultuous year for Indonesia. Promises of long-overdue democratic reform were quickly overshadowed by persistent political and economic instability, rampant corruption, civil unrest and terrorism. Performance artist Arahmaiani and war journalist Cordula Maria Rien Kuntari were witness to this important historical moment and its aftermath, both as insiders and outsiders. In addition to a shared national identity, both women share the common experience of being forced to leave their countries of origin as a result of their professional practice as it served to interrogate abuses of power and the hypocrisy of politics in their country.
‘Public Secrets’: Arts, Culture and Contemporary Indonesian Politics after the Fall of Suharto brings these two powerful ‘witnesses’ together to discuss the evolution of Indonesian politics over the past 15 years and the role of arts and culture both as a form of critique and a catalyst for positive social change.
Arahmaiani is one of Indonesia’s most respected and iconic contemporary artists, and her work is internationally recognized for its powerful and provocative commentaries on social and cultural issues. In the 1980s and ’90s, she established herself as a pioneer in the field of performance art in Southeast Asia, although her practice also incorporates a wide variety of media, including video, installation, painting, drawing, and sculpture. Since her first exhibition in 1980, her work has been included in over one hundred solo and group exhibitions around the world, including: the Venice Biennale (2003); Biennale of the Moving Image, Geneva (2003); Gwangju Biennale (2002); Bienal de São Paulo (2002), Performance Biennale, Israel (2001); Biennale de Lyon (2000); Werkleitz Biennale (2000); Bienal de la Habana (1997); Asia Pacific Triennial (1996); Yogya Biennial, (1994).
Erika Baglyas is a prominent representative of the mid-generation of Hungarian contemporary artists. She participated in the International Studio Program at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin 2012, 3 Months residency program at Residency Unlimited (RU) in New York 2013, in 2014 she resumes her work with the Hungarian Eötvös Scholarship in Berlin. The medium of her works – performance, installation, object, video, drawing, photo or actions carried out in alternative or public spaces – always reflects on the thematic chosen along a definite concept. The complex of her subjects is well represented in her DLA research – Social trauma as life situation – censored mind in the Kádár era. In her works, she studies the relation of public and private sphere by involving the historical context through her own subjectivity. As the artist’s personal approach, sensibility, intuition hold social reference, she often reflects on the judgement of artists’ social status. Texts, writings are always important elements of her works, often exceeding its limits and the visual environment also adds a new, unique layer of interpretation. She has been exhibiting since 2001, and often deals with topics of a sociological, psychological or philosophycal layer. (solidstonefabrics.com) Besides her artistic activity honoured with numerous awards, scholarships, she regularly contributes to art magazines, writing criticism and essays. Her works are represented in private and public collections.
CM Rien Kuntari is an Indonesian born freelance journalist. She spent most of her career with Kompas Daily in Jakarta. During her tenure at Kompas Daily she made journalistic visits in more than 50 countries in Asia, Europe, America, Africa, and the Middle East. Kuntari was also a war correspondent covering the Gulf War (Iraq 1991), the Rwanda Genocide (1994), the Iraq Referendum (1995 and 2002), Cambodia (1996) and East Timor until its independence (1992-2002). She was a presidential correspondent from Soeharto to Abdurrahman Wahid. In 2009, just one month after she published her book about East Timor’s bloody independence and after almost twenty years of service, she was fired by Kompas Daily due to the “controversy” surrounding her truthful reporting. East Timor, The Final Hour: a Journalist’s Notes is the first book about the painful birth of the Republic Democratic of Timor Leste written by an Indonesian civilian author that has been resulting to her travelling to the United States without any chance to go back to her homeland. She is currently living in the New York City as an independent writer.
freeDimensional (fD) advances social justice by hosting activists in art spaces and using cultural resources to strengthen their work. Since 2005, fD has helped over 200 artists doing courageous work benefitting their communities at the expense of their livelihoods, safety and free expression. fD has facilitated safe haven for artist-activists and culture workers during times of distress within art spaces and artist residency programs, as well as working with the administrators of those spaces to develop comprehensive systems of support in their communities, in order to access resources/services from other sectors, such as immigration and legal aid, healthcare, education, professional development and psychosocial support.
