The residency in Bucharest has catapulted the residents from Indonesia into an unaltered apartment from the 70s decorated in a paradoxical crowded blend of bourgeois style, orthodox shrines, and a familiar socialist touch, for almost a month. Like in a cabinet of curiosities, the residents immersed in the house’s configuration, turning it into a headquarter for research and studio site.
The artists decided to use the house not just as a space for living and researching, but also as the site for the final presentation. This occurs in the spirit of the alternative artistic manifestation from ’87, house pARTy in Bucharest, as a way for the artists to personally experience and engage with this type of manifestation, although in a different context and with different aims. Starting from the variations on the notion and consequences of food limitation in Romania prior to 89, the performative dinner gathers people we have encountered and who have informed the background of the works at an intimate dinner table.
Elia’s artistic practice on the discourse of food as a means to scrutinize power, politics and economic inequalities in the world is taken further in the frame of our current research. Drawing on the specters of a socialist past, the dinner will invite participants to discuss and share views to collectively build common real and imagined historical narratives on the Romania-Indonesia axis. Wimo Ambala will respond to the chaotic blend of the in site artefacts with videos and photographs where the in situ becomes both the subject and object of research. The house intervention by Wimo will be also used as a platform for collecting voices to further create a video work in collaboration with poet Vasile Leac.
Photos by Petre Fall.
Biographies
Adelina Luft
Adelina Luft (b. 1989, Romania) is an independent curator based in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. After finishing a bachelor’s degree in Public Relations at SNSPA Bucharest, she left for Indonesia where she finished a MA degree in Visual Art Studies. Surrounded by collectives, communities, and bottom-up practices of curating and collaborating for over 4 years, Adelina experiments with open-ended, multi-disciplinary curatorial propositions involving young and emerging Indonesian artists. Her academic research on South biennials and the long involvement in Jogja Biennale Equator is at the basis of her continual effort to develop horizontal, decolonized, international curatorial ideas and exchanges.
Wimo Ambala Bayang
Wimo Ambala Bayang (b. 1976, Magelang, Indonesia) is an artist who works with photography and video, based in Yogyakarta. His works reflect unique perspectives on culture that are not made under a pretense to criticize, but to make us rethink the habits that seem ‘to have always been there’. History and facts, minor and major, are important aspects which always must be considered in his creative process. In 2002, Wimo founded Ruang MES 56 with friends from ISI and continues to be an active member of the collective. In the past 5 years, Wimo participated in international artist exchanges, such as in China, Australia, Netherlands, and Denmark. There he explored new ideas, approaches and different contexts related to the development of contemporary photography, which influenced his decision to juxtapose photography with other disciplines in art.
Elia Nurvista
Elia Nurvista was born in Yogyakarta. She obtained her BFA from Indonesia Institute of Fine-Art (2010). She’s interested in exploring a wide range of art mediums with an interdisciplinary approach and focus on the discourse of food. Through food, she intends to scrutinize about power, social and economic inequality in this world. She has participated in several residencies including Koganecho Bazaar Artist in Residence, Yokohama (2012), “Politics of Food” program in Delfina Foundation, London (2014), Taipei Artist Village, Taipei (2014) and Choreographer’s LAB in Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt am Main (2016) and one year residency in kunstlerhaus Bethanien (2018-2019). In 2015 she initiated Bakudapan food study group with colleagues and students from Department of Anthropology Gadjah Mada University. With Bakudapan she has conducted research on food within the socio-political and cultural context. She lives and works in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.