OCTORA

The exhibition is informed in part by the artist’s early encounter with photographs related to the May 1998 anti-Chinese riots in Indonesia, an experience that has become a lasting point of inquiry in her practice.

Working with archival photographs and ethnographic records, Octora approaches the photograph as both historical document and constructed image. Images are cut apart, woven, and reassembled, interrupting the authority of the archive and the systems of knowledge through which it was produced. Underpinning the exhibition is the recognition that looking is never neutral: every image reflects a particular position, and every act of viewing is conditioned by inherited ways of seeing.

Alongside these works are sculptures that extend the exhibition’s inquiry into naming and classification. The Flower That Remembers, Octora’s first aluminium sculpture produced in collaboration with Yogya Art Lab, centres on Rafflesia arnoldii, reconsidering the histories embedded within its name and the authority that naming confers.