Exhibit comes full circle through elements of life

Exhibit comes full circle through elements of life

Chisato Hara, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

Installation art may confound potential exhibition visitors as to
how to approach the seemingly esoteric art form, which typically
combines a variety of techniques and materials, including
everyday objects, into a three-dimensional, spatial work.

Grace Siregar, whose Weather, Tragedy, Life opened on Friday
at Bentara Budaya in South Jakarta, and will run until Dec. 12,
responded to this ever-present dilemma of appreciation:
"Installation art is a powerful way of encouraging people to look
at the objects and materials around them in their daily lives
with fresh eyes. Artists often use 'art' materials that create a
diversion from their daily reality. Installation art can
counteract this tendency."

For those unfamiliar with installations, the catalog lists
individual pieces along with a quotation from renowned figures to
provide a framework of reference.

No darling of the local arts community, which tends toward the
more classical fine arts forms of painting, sculpture and
illustration, her works are often bold, frank and to some,
garish, expressions of the world around her, an approach she
attributes to her Batak heritage.

Beginning her foray into art at the age of six on Bangka
Island, South Sumatra, Grace's schoolteacher father placed her
under the "apprenticeship" of a traveling painter and encouraged
the pursuit of her creative talents across the island.

Later, after graduating from Sriwijaya University with an
international law degree, she studied under the late Jan van
Stolk as his sole student in Oosterbeck, the Netherlands. His
mentorship pushed her artistic development into a departure from
traditional material and toward exploring alternative media such
as metal, plastic, toiletries and kitchen appliances. Most
recently, she has begun to experiment with digital media and
organic material and, in this exhibition, meteorological
phenomena.

Perhaps it is this early introduction to travel, combined with
her strong ethnocultural identity, that has provided Grace with a
drive to seek artistic expressions of universal issues within a
communal context. Weather, Tragedy, Life draws mainly upon a one-
year residency in Ternate, North Sulawesi, where she worked in a
rehabilitation program organized by World Vision Indonesia for
post-conflict trauma survivors and trauma support workers,
focusing on art as an outlet for their experiences.

Appearing in traditional Batak dress, the opening day piece
featured a 2m-by-3m stack of 192 ice blocks in the gallery
courtyard, tracing the transformation of water through the life
cycle of ice, from solid, liquid to gas. Similarly, Grace weaves
the title themes through the individual exhibition pieces into a
study on the cyclic nature of life -- and death -- a Batak
philosophy.

"You could say that Batak see death as a celebration of coming
full circle," she said.

At times satirical and humorous, the pieces capture prevailing
sentiments to provide a commentary on an event or a social issue
through a juxtaposition of materials, inviting the response -- or
reaction -- of the viewer in determining their own perspective.
Her style is eclectic and vibrant, in which artistic elements
from Dutch Impressionism to American pop art can be found.

One such piece is Munir, Simply, a tribute to the late human
rights activist that plays on Andy Warhol's famous silkscreen of
celebrities, and which attempts to redefine the notion of an
icon. Conceived before police began investigating the possibility
of foul play in Munir's death aboard a Netherlands-bound flight,
Grace believes recent developments have made the work
thematically more relevant.

As it is often said, all art is social commentary and no art
is created in isolation of the world; and Grace's work brings the
contemporary world and its many issues to life within the
confined space of the Bentara Budaya.

-----------------------------------
Weather, Tragedy, Life
Bentara Budaya
Jl. Palmerah Selatan 17,
Central Jakarta
Tel. 021-548-3008/549-0666, ex. 7910