Arahmaiani Feisal

(she/her)
b 1961, Bandung, Indonesia
Lives and works in Yogyakarta, Indonesia

In the 1980s and 1990s, Arahmaiani’s art attracted public controversy and death threats from Islamic fundamentalist groups in Indonesia for her provocative use of religious symbols. This led to a period of imprisonment in 1983, the censorship of her works and a self-imposed exile in 1994, during which the artist fled to Australia for her safety. In Tatapan Gadis (Girl’s Gaze), Arahmaiani embraces a sombre colour palette of muted greys and cool blues. Although Arahmaiani is better known for her performance works, the painting bears traces of the artist’s ongoing explorations into the intertwined relation between the gendered body, religion and spirituality, and tradition and modernity. Solemn, still and gazing toward the viewer with an inscrutable expression, the girl exudes an aura of reverence and possibly martyrdom. The meditative blue of her eyes, however, is disrupted by the red of bloodied thorns, strung around her neck. Referencing Christian iconography but rendered in Arahmaiani’s usual abstracted style of painting, Tatapan Gadis asks us to consider the various forms of suffering endured by the contemporary woman’s body, particularly those connected to patriarchal belief systems, including that of an increasingly neoliberal, westernised culture of “globality.”

Tatapan Gadis 2004
acrylic on canvas
150 x 100 cm