Unpacking: Self & Identity

As a symbol of the search for national identity and hope in contemporary Indonesia, Enka and Ipeh insert their self-portraits into paintings, drawings and sculptures at numerous places within the exhibition. These images suggest Enka and Ipeh's position as distant witnesses to those historical events and attempt to deliver distinct perspectives of their current position as artists, as existing history remains open to question.

For Enka, his use of self-portrait represents the wider Javanese people. As the audience we see an interesting recontexualisation of traditional Javanese puppetry within the exhibition. Hanging on the scaffold is both a sourced Ganesha traditional puppet, accompanied by two contemporary versions with a self portrait of Enka as the puppet in ‘Orang Jawa’ 1 and 2.

For Ipeh, most of the female figures in her works are depictions of her own self, as the narratives in her works come from personal experience. In narratives of past events, she places herself as present at that event, to be a form of response and reflection.