Ipeh or Nur Hanifah is a young artist works and lives in Yogyakarta. She graduated from Fine Art Departmen, majoring in Print Making, ISI Yogyakarta in 2016. She much explores her personal life, colonialization, and history onto her works –for example her late series of works inspired by Banda Island and another series entitled Salimah.

Salimah is a series of work inspired by a short story written by Intan Paramadhita entitled Goyang Penasaran (Curious Wiggle) and included in a book Kumpulan Budak Setan (Devil’s Slave), 2010. Goyang Penasaran took Salimah as a main role in the story, a dangdut singer who faced a negative stigma within the religious society for being a dangdut singer. Dangdut is a genre of Indonesian folk and traditional popular music that is partly derived from Hindustani, Malay, and Arabic music, and for koplo-dangdut female singer oven shows erotic dance in a sexy outfit.

These 20 panels of drawing were made in 2015-2016. 14 panels of the works are depicting the storiette’s narration about Salimah, and the rest 6 panels are depicting the artist’s personal experiences which she thinks is quite analogical to Salimah’s story: if Salimah faced stigma for being a dangdut singer, Ipeh got the stigma for choosing to be an artist; if Salimah was censured for showing erotic dance and for not wearing hijab, she was criticized for depicting critical and vulgar visualization on her works and also for not wearing hijab; if Salimah was ridiculed for wearing ijab, and so was Ipeh. Religion, stigma, profession, art, censure, critique and hijab, are what make Ipeh thinks that Salimah’s story in a subtle way reflecting her personal life. For her Salimah story seems to be a fictional portrait of her life.