Jakarta & Yogyakarta: Ade Darmawan

View of “Ade Darmawan: Water Resistance,” 2024, Cemeti Institute for Art and Society, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Photo: Kurniawan Widodo.

Tuban (2019–), in the first room, was a mélange of furniture, found paraphernalia, and a distillation apparatus. Electric stoves were placed on wooden dining tables, reclining chairs, and wardrobes, transmitting heat into glass distillers and condensers. Various herbs and organic materials—nutmeg, cinnamon, and clover leaf—bubbled and fumed inside the equipment, invading the air with sweet, tingling scents. As the machines extracted oils from the dried herbs, the results dripped onto books, nibbling away their pages. Though seemingly disparate, these items carefully wove an aromatic map of Indonesia’s history. The selection of herbs was sourced from Arus Balik(1995), a novel by Pramoedya Ananta Toer, whose writings were banned under Suharto’s regime for their left-leaning messages. The oil-stained books were different editions of Suharto’s biography: among them, the well-known anthology Jejak Langkah Pak Harto (Pak Harto’s Footsteps), written by his cronies to glorify his New Order legacy. Ade’s conceptual distillation of archive-sourced materials subverted Suharto’s self-glorification: The oil from the materials named in a book Suharto banned now corroded the pages of his biography, as if his very tools of oil extraction had turned against his symbolic image.

Read the full article at Artforum.

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