In conversation with Citra Sasmita
In Timur Merah Project II; The Harbor of Restless Spirit (2019), Citra Sasmita subverts the stories and myths of Hindu-Javanese epics where she replaces the princes, kings, warriors, and other male heroes of Sanskrit epics with the figure of a woman to destabilize the male gaze of the female body–as passive, ornamental, or sexual. Sasmita references the style of traditional Balinese Kamasan paintings, a craft where women were designated to subsidiary roles and thus written out of national art historical canons. Painted on a stretched cowhide and anchored above a pool of fragrant turmeric—an herb known for healing and vitality, Sasmita endows her female protagonists with powerful agency. The work challenges the patriarchal society and rebukes the pervasive sexual and social inequality ingrained in art history.
Sasmita’s practice revisits traditional artistic languages as tools of expression in contemporary society. Her works use the vibrant and thriving genealogy of Balinese traditional painting, Kamasan, to express avowedly feminist perspectives. Get insight into how tradition and feminism converge in Sasmita’s practice and learn more about the work presented at KADIST San Francisco for her U.S. debut below.
KADIST: Your practice often subverts tradition, centering female protagonists to reclaim space for contemporary feminist agency and empowerment. By employing the Kamasan style, you disrupt the male gaze. In Timur Merah Project II; The Harbor of Restless Spirit (2019), the protagonists are depicted with trees growing out of them, aflame, and at times with only one limb or a serpent’s body. They appear to be in transition. Can you speak about the tension that arises from this subversion and the almost violent state of these bodies?
Citra Sasmita: Bali has a long history of how art became a political tool during the Dutch colonial era through the perspective of European artists who came and provided exotic and beautiful perspectives on how to depict the beauty of nature and the female body. Society has accepted how art depicts women’s bodies and figures as inseparable from the aesthetic references and standards that are artists’ conventions. The body as an object of beauty and elegance is frozen in the medium of art. This made me consciously want to fight against the Western aesthetic paradigm that we have accepted and glorified in the historical canon of Balinese art by bringing back the essence of original Balinese art which is much more complex in depicting life and its cosmology.
Growing up in a Balinese cultural and ritualistic environment, I carry the legacy of bloody colonial and political historical narratives which made me treat the figures in my paintings as autonomous subjects to record the inheritance I received as a colonized nation. The history of our independence was built through bloodshed, which we celebrate today through repeated religious rituals as a form of respect for our ancestors. A woman’s body is a record of the experiences and realities of life that women experience and how they live their lives both in nature and social construction.
I describe a codification of the maternal realm, primordial signs before humans understood language and symbols. Women have an essential connection with feminine nature, which we integrate in our philosophy and ritual forms. In Balinese culture, we tend to personify nature as a supernatural figure that deserves respect and provides reciprocity to humanity for its survival. We believe that violating and damaging the balance of nature, such as human progress in objectifying nature, will create havoc and disaster.
KADIST: The materials you employ, such as cowhide and turmeric, as well as the Kamasan style itself, are imbued with religious syncretism and cultural significance. How do you navigate the relationship between the contemporary feminist discourse that your practice explores and the religious and cultural traditions your work engages with?
Citra Sasmita: The medium and artistic language that I offer is an attempt to reason with the complexity of women’s lives in other realities that are not only oppressed by social hierarchy, power, modernity, and dehumanizing mentalities by presenting inherited meanings and ideologies. Reading women’s relationships vertically with God in spirituality, and horizontally with fellow humans and nature is a foundational theme of my work. Many scientific studies continue to be developed to analyze life phenomena and provide readings of knowledge according to the relevance of the times. My artistic practice ignites new readings of feminist discourse that have become canon. How do we navigate feminist studies to be able to more holistically examine the lives of societies and women who preserve an inherited way of life? An artist is able to contribute by offering alternatives and honest ideas in the work that reflect the reality of life and the artist’s experience.
KADIST: The pool of turmeric that grounds the work is inscribed with a fragment from a 14th-century poem that explores the Balinese calendar, whilst the cowhide suspended above draws from oral histories or folklore. What is the significance of literature to your practice and how does it influence the narratives you create?
Citra Sasmita: Before studying visual arts, I studied poetry and literature. For me, literary and visual language have the same values, but they are only expressed in different mediums. In designing the work, I paid attention to the holistic aspect of Balinese culture, namely that all forms of art, ritual, and spirituality are whole and not compartmentalized. Balinese culture considers literature and art to be spiritual efforts that can be integrated with aspects of cosmology (natural cycles, time momentum, prophecy, reconciliation of phenomena that occur, and efforts to maintain natural stability) and sublimation in ritual is the highest peak of aesthetics.
Citra Sasmita’s Timur Merah Project II; The Harbor of Restless Spirit (2019) is on view at KADIST San Francisco as part of A Woman You Thought You Knew through August 3, 2024.