GHOSTS FROM THE PAST

revealing a divergent narrative of

the past, through a perspective of

the present.

Ipeh Nur and Enka Komariah’s Ghosts from the Past is a leading example of contemporary artists redefining cultural and artistic conventions through a rich material and conceptual Practice. The artworks selected in the educational resource bring to the forefront of student enquiry the Yogyakarta couple’s complex Practice, which comprises of academic research, experimental art making and curatorial concernment. The artworks employ media ranging from drawing, oil painting, and charcoal, collectively forming a postmodern installation approach that speaks to the artists’ perspective as a younger generation of artists articulating their ideas about their country’s history and memories of the past. Questions and activities invite students to engage with individual artworks and the exhibition in its entirety, to consider themes that emerge from the artists’ research on history and art. Students are encouraged to make significant connections between these artists and the wider study of art history. 

Scroll down for suggestions and activities for teachers and students.

Meet the Artists

Ipeh Nur and Enka Komariah are a young Yogyakarta couple collaborating as artists since connecting as Graphic Art students at the Indonesian Institute of the Arts in Yogyakarta. Collectively, their work engages with their Nations history, in the context of the post-Pacific War and Independence in 1945 onwards. The artists lead academic research which has contributed to the current debates on contemporary Indonesian artistic practice and the possibilities of looking divergently at their national narrative. Their artworks are personal reflections and perspectives that are used to provoke a shared questioning in response to the absence of official national historiography.

Their collaborative piece Rumah Yang Yahud (A Cool House) was presented at the ArtJog 2022 festival in Yogyarkarta.

Ipeh Nur  

Ipeh Nur was Born in Yogyakarta in 1993. In a city rich in traditional arts and cultural heritage, Ipeh has developed a practice that draws inspiration from personal experiences, everyday struggles and memory. Ipeh enjoys creating dramatic visuals that evoke the feeling of being on stage, featuring several plots or narratives within a single image. While most of her practice comprises black and white drawings on paper, she also experiments with other mediums and techniques such as batik, ceramics, screen printing, etching, sculpture, resin relief and mural painting. 

Ipeh has exhibited extensively in Indonesia and the Indo-Pacific region. She has participated in exhibitions focused on emerging female representation and narrative such as Women, Art & Politics at FCAC Roslyn Smorgon Gallery in Melbourne. Ipeh has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in Sydney, including Indonesi Calling 2020 and Our Grandfather Road at 16albermarle.

Enka Komariah

Enka Komariah was born in Klaten, Central Indonesia in 1993. Enka’s work is unique for its sensitive combination of drawing on paper and imaginative introduction of an alternative mediums. Enka often incorporates satirical and ironic symbols into his art, blurring the lines between societal taboos and norms. He also explores his personal identity by drawing from the agrarian traditions of Java Nan and contrasting them with popular cultural images. 

Enka is a member of several art collectives, including Barasub (comics), Gegerboyo (murals), and Beresyit (illustrations). He has exhibited widely in Indonesia, winning the Young Artist Award at Art Jog in 2019 and since has featured in exhibitions in Australia and Japan.  

For Teachers

Ghosts from the Past presents exciting opportunities to integrate new works by younger generation Indonesian artists into existing curricula and case study investigations. The exhibition gives insight into practising artists and how they can use contemporary techniques to create artworks that question historical narratives and events, inviting the possibility of new and alternative perspectives that can bring a sense of cultural and generational progression. The artists also demonstrate a strong ability to use personal experiences as an avenue to prompt broader cultural and societal discussions. Ghosts from the Past addresses the critical relationship between art, culture, academia, historical documentation, and social experience.

Suggestions for Teaching and Learning

Consider examining the exhibition as an in-depth focus study within a broader investigation of Art & social provocation, Art & archival documentation, Art & Collective Narrative/Identity, Art & Healing and Art & Symbolism.

Through these lenses students investigate the exhibition to examine artists as truth seekers, risk-takers, academics and social provocateurs. The artists communicate through a diversity of media, employing significant Postmodern techniques. Contemporary material practice such as the use of archival documentation and images, found and designed objects for curatorial presentations, the recontextualisation of texts and appropriation of cultural symbols are significant aspects focused on in these resources and are encouraged to be addressed by teachers throughout the study.

A Case Study Example: The Artist and

National Identity

Students investigate the impact an artist’s practice can have in contributing to the discourse of their country’s cultural, historical and National identity. Students can begin by researching the relationship between arts and the cultural identity of a nation using the Tate Modern’s Artist Rooms: Cultural Identity.

In a broader conversation, students begin with works as early as the Chauvet Cave paintings (c 30 000 years ago) and the Parthenon Sculptures (447-442 BC) to understand art as a form of communicating a culture’s values. This leads into a discussion on historical documentation by examining traditional artworks in history that have famously contributed to a country’s narrative by depicting a social or political scenes such as Velázques’ ‘Las Meninas’ (1656), Illya Repin’s ‘Barge Haulers on the volga’ (1870), Käthe Kollwitz ‘The Peasant War’ (1895),  Hiroshige’s ‘One Hundred Famous Views of Edo’ (1856) and Honoré Daumier’s  series ‘The First Class Carriage’ / ‘The Second Class Carriage’ and ‘The Third Class Carriage’ (1864). Students are encouraged to consider the following provocations and debate their perspectives amongst peers:

•   How does an artwork contribute to the framing of culture and National identity?

·       Are artists expected to capture the majorities truth (societal norms), or their truth (informed by perspective)? What can be a consequence of either of these outcomes?

·       Is a ‘snapshot of culture’ in the form of an artwork a reliable source of historical reflection and documentation?

They consider the continuum narrative artists have on the evolution of culture and National identity by analysing works such as John Brack’s ‘Collin St. 5p.m.’ (1955), Norma Rockwell’s ‘A Problem We All Live With’ (1964) and He Duoling and Ai Xuan’s ‘The Third Generation’ (1984).

‘Personal and National identities are built on and influenced by immediate and past events, environments, traditions, and cultural legacies. Artists capture and document not only the physical conditions of a society but the emotional and mental conditions. Across history, artists have captured moments of political and social adventure as archival tools to document time and place. Through their artworks, artists construct a sense of who we were and are as a person and as a collective, this is National Identity. Society’s identity is always fluid. When we see identity as static, we record people with stereotypes and do not see them for who they are. Art is one way to challenge static notions of identity by engaging the viewer in visual narratives that are unfamiliar to them, and that educate and challenge their previously held notions.’
- (Adapted from Introduction to Art: Design, Context and Meaning, Pamela J. Sachant and Peggy Blood)

Finally, students will use the text above and explore the focus artworks from Ghosts from the Past, to extend their knowledge and appreciate how contemporary and younger generations of artmaking practices contribute to the questioning, advancing, and reshaping of national identity. 

They might also look comparatively at works by artists such as Abdul Abdullah, Brook Andrew, Liam Benson, Gordon Bennet, Tony Albert, Albert Namatjira, Ken Done, Sidney Nolan, Norman Rockwell, Narsiso Martinez, Nadia Hernández, William Kentridge, JR, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, Hector Guimard, Zhang Xiaogang, Sun Xun, Liu Xiaodong, Yu Hong, Chiharu Shiota, Tetsuya Ishida, Kimsooja, Ruangrupa, Ai Wei Wei, Tammy Wong Hulbert, Rushdi Anwar and Wawi Navarroza.

NNSW HSC Syllabus Focus: Art Criticism/Art History

• Artist’s Practice: ideas and inspiration/choice and discernment

• Conceptual Framework: the relationship between artist, world, artwork and audience

• The Frames: Cultural/Subjective/Postmodern/Structural

• Contemporary use of materials and techniques

• Curatorial techniques and the role of galleries in supporting artist intentions

• International Baccalaureate Diploma Syllabus Focus: Visual Arts in Context

• Theoretical Practice: Students examine artists working in a different cultural contexts and seek to understand the limitation and possibilities to discuss historical events through artmaking. 

• Curatorial Practice: Students develop an informed response to work and exhibitions they have seen and experienced

Questions Inviting Written Response:

•  Analyse how artworks in Ghosts from the Past represent and document cultural histories.

• To what extent are Enka and Ipeh’s artworks a mirror and a lens of their time?

• Contemporary art can provide a valuable yet unsettling critique of society.
  Discuss this statement with reference to artworks from Ghosts of the Past.

• Analyse the roles of memory and experience in the creation of artworks.
  Discuss this statement with reference to artworks from Ghosts of the Past.

• Evaluate the different ways in which artists make demands on their audiences. Discuss this statement with reference to artworks from Ghosts of the Past.

Familiarise yourself with these terms and vocabulary:

• Appropriation: the use of pre-existing objects or images with little or no transformation applied to them, using original context/connotation to create new meaning.

• Agrarianism: a social and political philosophy, perspective that stresses the primacy of family farming, widespread property ownership, and political decentralization. Agrarian ideas are typically justified in terms of how they serve to cultivate moral character and to develop a full and responsible person.

• Archives: a collection of historical documents or records providing information about a place, institution, or group of people.

• Call to action: an exhortation or stimulus to do something in order to achieve an aim or deal with a problem.

• Documentation: material that provides official information or evidence or that serves as a record.

• Identity: the fact of being who or what a person or thing is.

• Narrative: a spoken, written or drawn account of connected events; a story.

• National Identity: a sense of a nation as a cohesive whole, as represented by distinctive traditions, culture, and language.

• Nationalism: identification with one's own nation and support for its interests, especially to the exclusion of the interests of other nations.

• Recontextualisation: an object is taken from its original meaning/purpose and reused in an alternative context to create new meaning.

• Social provocateur: a person who deliberately behaves controversially to provoke argument or other strong reactions.

• Societal Taboos: a group's ban, prohibition, or avoidance of something (usually an utterance or behaviour) based on the group's sense that it is excessively repulsive, offensive, sacred, or allowed only for certain persons.

Useful Links:

https://alg.manifoldapp.org/projects/introduction-to-art

https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/nationalism-arts

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/i/identity-politics

https://www.tate.org.uk/artist-rooms/cultural-identity

https://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2011/sanjaivekovic/essays/RM%20Identity%20and%20the%20Arts.pdf

https://theconversation.com/rethinking-what-it-means-to-be-australian-through-art-106535.

About contemporary art

in southeast Asia

Eluding simple definitions or falsely universalising connections between distinct histories and cultures, the art of southeast Asia is vibrant, dynamic and complex, bearing traces of “the rise and fall of kingdoms and empires, and … the historical traces of colonisation and the often-traumatic birth of nations.”1 Artists from Indonesia, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, the Philippines, Vietnam, Singapore and Malaysia explore local and global themes including personal and national identity and community, cultural knowledge, power, faith and the increasingly urgent impact of humans on fragile ecosystems.

Find out more

https://theartling.com/en/artzine/artist-defined-contemporary-southeast-asian-art

https://artsandculture.google.com/story/no-country-contemporary-art-for-south-and-southeast-asia-solomon-r-guggenheim-museum/1QUh-qBV5YVyKQ?hl=en

https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/five-of-the-most-influential-women-artists-from-southeast-asia

https://artradarjournal.com/7-influential-women-artists-from-asia-pacific/

Joan Kee (2011) Introduction Contemporary Southeast Asian Art, Third Text, 25:4, 371-381, DOI: 10.1080/09528822.2011.587681 at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09528822.2011.587681

1 “No Country: Contemporary Art for South and Southeast Asia”, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation