THE ARMORY SHOW 2020

Works by Dutch-born, Mella Jaarsma, include photographic documentation and artist made garments used for a site-specific performance conducted during the fairs opening reception. A gesture that builds on the artist’s continued practice of constructing tapestries made of cultural signifiers that allude to ways in which trade, globalisation, and diaspora affect individualism within larger political structures.

Similarly, Jompet Kuswidananto focuses his attention towards installations of banal objects that present conceptual discourses around collective hardship and cultural uncertainty. Although physically devoid, the implied figures within his work hold a strong presence as displays of regalia and defaced domestic goods reveal a literal and ideological emptiness that is perhaps more visceral than either object’s original form.

The gallery’s installation will further examine each artists relationship to the body politic as well as their use of void to contemplate its multiple allusions to Indonesia’s checkered relationship with foreign influence and government reform. From references to Indonesia’s colonial period, to suggestions of cultural fluidity, this installation exposes the figure as a malleable construct-transformed endlessly by trauma. This focus on reinvention poses increasingly complex and interconnected challenges that address globalised modernity as something equally haunting and hopeful.