Artist Statement

For my artist in residency program with Redbase Foundation, I began to collect some old stamps, books and old magazine with some pictures of Indonesian women images. I also put together some notes written by my late mother who were an aerobic instructor almost in her entire adult life. I believe that those old notes and illustrations are part of the important archives of the history of Indonesian women development in our culture. It may represents style in fashion, education, and also life style. I have started to do some paper collages, combining images of some Indonesian woman from the sources onto some different media as such as plywood, paper, or solid wood. I then used acrylic paint and color pencil, with which I drew and painted on the surface.

We are living in a society where still so many people still judge women by what they look or what they wear. Trough this project, I want to portray one small aspect to this social reality.

To create this project, I not only use paper as material, but also ready made objects with wood and stone as my drawing and painting medium. I am going to create strong images of women trough distorted figurative sculptures rendered in layers of colors. This stylistic device adds to the images an impression of vulnerability, and at the same time, one of ag-gression. These images could be of me, of you, or of anyone else around US.

Ari Bayuaji