On weaving as a ritualistic practice and tool for decolonisation
By Ho See Wah

At the artist’s studio. Image courtesy of Art Agenda, JKT.

A&M's Fresh Faces is where we profile an emerging artist from the region every month and speak to them about how they kick-started their career, how they continue to sustain their practice and what drives them as artists. Read our profile on Indonesian artist Alexander Sebastianus Hartanto here.

Could you talk about your background? And at what point in your life did you decide to pursue a career in art?
We all came from. I came from various points of home and moments in time that allowed me to recognise differences and change. One of these points was going back and forth from the city of Jakarta to my grandmother’s village in East Java. From there, I recognised both the sacralisation and the commodification of the practice of making, especially within the city. The Eurocentric view of fine art’s value and practices overwrote the primal intention of human’s making, unmaking and remaking in relation to all and any given. I therefore pursued a career in becoming.

In Javanese, there is no translation for art/kunst/seni. Rather, there is Sani: an offering, sacrifice and search for oneself through the search of an unknown. While doing my ethnographic thesis on decolonising, or reclaiming indigenous values of art through the contemporary, I decided to continue this inquiry of Sani as a practitioner and not only as a researcher.

Could you share how you’ve maintained your practice after graduation?
I actually took a break after graduation and worked as a barista in New York City. I go with the flow, and make and inquire without pressures from the ‘art world’, the market and so on.

We tend to visualise a line as straight. But lines can also hold a complex dimensionality and flexibility like a thread. It is able to turn, intertwine and even split into various paths.

What if we view lines like a rhizome, such that it “has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo”?¹ My line grows from between.

‘Interwoven: A Weaver's Recollection of Time’, Art Agenda, JKT, exhibition installation view. Image courtesy of Art Agenda, JKT.

How did the opportunity for your first solo show, ‘Interwoven’ with Art Agenda, JKT come about?
My high school friend, Andari, shared my work with the team at Art Agenda, JKT, where she works as their Indonesian liaison. The funny thing is that I am a huge fan of what they do, especially with my fondness for Southeast Asian modern abstract expressionists. When I learned that they are expanding to include regional contemporary artists, I was glad to be on board for their OPPO Art Jakarta Virtual 2020 project, which includes a solo exhibition debuting my work.

What was the process like preparing for it?
Very last minute, as usual. Fun, hectic and personal.

You seem to have an intimate relationship with the practice of weaving. Could you bring us through what the materiality of this craft means for you, especially in the context of how you use it as a tool for decolonisation and reclaiming other modes of existence?

Traditional Javanese handloom weaving process. Image courtesy of Art Agenda, JKT.

That is when I realised the practice and value of the arts is rooted deeply in Eurocentric canons and modernisation, to the point where to make art is to be heavily attached to the white wall, the market and academia where there is the expectation to be conceptually excellent.

The indigenous practices of making were colonised, and weaving became a “traditional art” that is exoticised. It is collected by tourists in a market, whereas “fine art” is defined as an intellectually and conceptually rich piece to be stretched and framed, titled and priced in a gallery or museum to showcase its exclusiveness.

To decolonise art is to critique the development of art where it has been hegemonically capitalised and intellectualised in the art market or “the white museum”. It is to reclaim and redefine our own personal values as makers and viewers, and the essence of why we humans create, craft and bring ontologies to the material world. While contemporary art is fueled by trends of aesthetics and identity politics, the contemporary also allows such agency of reclamation and exploration to exist.

Could you talk more about how your work as a textile craft school developer and ethnographer at Yayasan Rumah SukkhaCitta, Java is influenced by your artistic practice, and vice versa?
At Yayasan Rumah SukkhaCitta, we build craft schools to provide educational and financial support for impoverished artisans across Indonesia. I have found it crucial to teach makers to be accountable toward the ontologies of the objects and art they make.

Practicing in both traditional and contemporary art, I envision blurring the lines between what it means to craft the practices inherited from our culture, and how we still have agency to tell new stories and make new traditions. My colleagues and I continue to develop and innovate craft while still maintaining a sustainable practice as we work alongside craftswomen.

Alexander Sebastianus Hartanto, 'Kain Duka IV', 2017, handwoven ikat dyed cotton warp, 97 x 160cm. Image courtesy of the artist.

Who has been a mentor or an important artistic influence? And why?
My grandmother was a huge influence to me as she was one of the first women in her family to pursue a degree in English and Indonesian Literature. When I was 10, I helped her type her syllabus as she had a love-hate relationship with the computer. She would share with me a range of works, from Chairil Anwar’s poetries to Jane Austen’s classic fictions. From there, I learnt the different perspectives and techniques of writers, and how they use colours, tones and symbolism to sincerely paint their stories. The traditional craftswomen from my grandmother’s hometown also taught me to make beyond traditional notions of art, where creating can be an embodiment of a ritual.

I am also very much influenced by post-structuralists such as philosopher Gilles Deleuze, queer theorist Sara Ahmed and post-colonial theorist Homi K. Bhabha. I am interested in their ideas of deconstructing object ontologies and extending beings beyond binaries, allowing us to become.

Could you share what your favourite space is, and why you are drawn to it?
The ocean holds a lot of groundness for me.

What are your hopes for your own local art scene, and regionally as well?
I hope for a more inclusive, experimental and eclectic local art scene that examines and questions the hegemonic Western-influenced art world. We should also have fun, such as using different platforms and spaces for works to exist in a new context. There can be shows in the parking lots of shopping malls, and art fairs on the Indonesian e-commerice site, Tokopedia to disrupt values of art and its economy.

‘Interwoven: A Weaver's Recollection of Time’ with Art Agenda, JKT at Wisma GEHA, and can also be viewed online here. It will run till 16 January 2021.

More information on Sebastianus’ practice can also be found here.

¹Deleuze, Gilles; Guattari, Félix (1987). A Thousand Plateaus. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 978-0-8166-1402-8.
²Barnett, Pennina (2012 ). ‘Folds, Fragments, Surfaces: Towards a Poetics of Cloth’. J. Hemmings (Ed.), The Textile Reader (pp.182-191 ). London: Berg Publishers.