Restu Ratnaningtyas
(she/her)
b 1981, Tangerang, Indonesia
Lives and works in Yogyakarta, Indonesia
Thoughtfully stitching together discarded scraps of fabric, Restu Ratnaningtyas transforms textile waste into an eerily beautiful object of contemplation. The work is replete with textural variegations—sheer stretches of pastel fabric layered over polka dots, smudged ink in collocation with haphazardly stitched thread, and a soft fabric chain link anchored to a brown quilted cloth base. Altogether, these components form the vertically stacked structure of a temple, as the name of the work suggests. But just as the artwork itself embraces a multi-layered and complex materiality, the temple it depicts is not all that it seems on the surface. With dismembered limbs and body parts confined within its structure, Restu’s Temple of Gloom teases the boundary between the seen and unseen, internal states of being and external societal pressures, and in the process, offers up the body as a corporeal site for such negotiations.
Temple of gloom 2020
cloth, cotton, polyester, natural dye
200 x 125 cm
Tantrum 2016
watercolour on paper, 55 x 45 cm
Tantrum 2016
watercolour on paper, 75 x 55 cm
In her series of watercolour paintings, Restu Ratnaningtyas takes an autobiographical approach, exploring the intersections of her identity as ‘an adult, mother, human, and artist.’ Created during a time of great adversity in her domestic life and pressures surrounding her public status as an artist, Ratnaningtyas once more expresses a sense of inner emotional turmoil and conflict in her art making. In the fleshy and viscous forms which twist, float,
and suffocate the human figure in the Tantrum paintings, the artist externalises the seemingly trivial but often overwhelming burdens of daily and domestic life.