Sekarputri Sidhiawati

Sekarputri Sidhiawati

Artist Bio

Sekar Puti was born in Jakarta in 1986. Puti moved from Jakarta to Bandung in 2004 to study in the Ceramic Art studio at the Bandung Institute of Technology. Her interest in becoming an artist or entrepreneur led her to start Derau, a brand of home-made ceramics that could be sold in shops, while also developing a solo practice built around exhibition pieces. She recently took up an offer to open a ceramics studio in Bali to scale up her production, relocating with the family in mid 2018, adding the role of businesswoman to a list that also includes artist, wife, and mother. 

Puti’s final project at art school, a personal reflection on her recent marriage, was a finalist in the Soemardja Art Award in 2010. In 2013 she gave birth to her first child, and the work based on her pregnancy journey was a finalist in the BaCAA: Bandung Contemporary Art Awards. Her work was in the Jakarta Contemporary Ceramic Biennale in 2014, and after her second child in 2017, she was included in Temperature affect: women ceramicists at the Museum of Fine arts and Ceramicists at the Museum of Fine Arts and Ceramics, and Manifesto #6, a young artists’ survey at the National Gallery of Indonesia. In 2018 she had her first solo exhibition, Derau/tinggal (Noise/stay) at Studio Eksotika in Bali.

Brewing self

Usually we often brew our drink of choice with hot water in order to diffuse the stronger taste of it. In the coffee industry, brewing has a deep philosophy. The technique of brewing may be similar, but often the case, when different people brew them, the coffee results also vary. Each person is unique and it is what makes each cup of coffee special. Brewing Self could be interpreted as giving pressure or a “temperature shock” to our process to get the appropriate result. I create this work in the middle of an unprecedented time, amidst a global pandemic where countless opportunities that had to be missed, postponed, or canceled made me think about the concept of surrendering ourselves. I personally believe that to survive this time we are currently in, we cannot passively accept the situation. While acceptance is good and could generally be the first step to making improvement, it is rarely constructive. The best way is to persevere and carry through this challenging time in a never-stop-trying manner.

My ceramic works come with several visual images that are inspired by everyday life. I tried to elaborate the inner struggles I’ve been experiencing during this pandemic. Visuals that look identical are not necessarily the same. Individuals differ from each other and cannot be perceived equal, the way they suffer or impact received by COVID may look similar but each has their own struggles. Above everything, I believe that the way to survive and achieve an ‘amazing life’ is by accepting bitter pills of hard-to-swallow truths. With that, we are able to understand the unique ways of growth and self-development to face that bitterness. 

SELECTED WORKS