Erika Ernawan

Erika Ernawan

Artist Bio

Erika Ernawan (born Bandung 1986) has been producing works since 2009. She is an artist who often uses her physical state (body) as the object of her works. She engages with paint, photography, performance, installation and other media as elements of the works. Her performance approach pushes against the edge of morally-established meaning or understanding in society. She questions values, social systems and the process of making art by showing possibilities on perspective and how “gaze” plays an important role in it.

In 2007 she received a Bachelor degree in Painting, and in 2010 a Master of Art degree at the Faculty of Fine Art and Design at Institute of Technology in Bandung. In 2011, she was awarded second place winner in the Bandung Contemporary Art Awards, for the artwork “Mirror Sees Me” series. She has participated in a number of art exhibitions in the cities of Indonesian, also exhibited her works abroad such as in Singapore, Berlin, Lichtenstein, Rome, and Melbourne and has had four solo exhibitions. She lives and works in Bandung, Indonesia.

Body as a motion 02

As rational beings, humans will always interpret and express themselves in front of other humans, one of which is by making artwork.  Nonetheless modern humans rely solely on knowledge as the only main foundation in understanding ideas about reality that are mainly dominated by ratio.  This shifts and ignores the role of the experiencing process in it, where the body definition within the artwork will receive value and continuously mutate without stopping when facing the beholder.

 In a sense, truth can be present vaguely and overlapping because of the communication process that does not only involve the five senses, but also involves the process of looking at ‘Gazing’ (a world of thought that is operationalised by the rules of power).  So, when presenting the body into an artwork, it seems to be a political decision and has the gender that is controlled by the ‘Gaze’ owner.

Therefore, the object becomes insignificant, but then, how to experience the overall structure of this object as and become an artwork. I consider this effort to extend aesthetics which is not just a matter of ‘visual pleasure’ and subjectivity of the mind but also engaging our self-experience in it.

SELECTED WORKS