Citra Sasmita's practice challenges the post-colonial myths sustained within Balinese culture by showing powerful female figures as central characters in her retelling of history. Often using multisensory elements and traditional techniques kept within male lineages, her artworks aim to open up discourse beyond the aesthetic to examine the experience of women in Bali.
Read MoreTorment (2015) depicts a nude woman kissing a severed pig's head, drinking the blood that trickles from its lips and down her torso and arm. The pig in Balinese culture traditionally symbolises immorality, and the uncomfortable embrace depicted in the painting illustrates the psychological and physical abuse that is often left unacknowledged within its patriarchal society.
Torment was featured alongside her sculpture Mea Vulva, Maxima Vulva (2016) in the group exhibition Crossing: Beyond Baliseering at 45downstairs, Melbourne. The exhibition critiqued the post-colonial practice of Baliseering, which dictated the preservation of the culture from outside influence, leading to a romanticism and stagnation of Bali's own cultural identity.
In 2019, Sasmita began her ongoing series 'Timur Merah Project', which features large-scale canvases and installations executed in the traditional Kamasan painting technique begun in the 15th-century and historically learnt by men. These works are inspired by the ceiling paintings of the Kertagosa Museum in Klungkung, which were used by the Kertagosan royal court and narrated Hindu epics of cosmic significance. The fresco was so integral to society that it would be consulted by the king to decide his sentence over the fate of convicts in court trials.
Interviewing a female priest and Kamasan painter, Mangku Muriati, for her source material, Sasmita reappropriated this historic art form to instead centre female heroism where they had previously been described as witches, villains, or mere decoration. Just like the original source, Sasmita's works aim to respond and give meaning to the space in which they are placed, which eventually lead from two-dimensional canvases to immersive works.
Ode to the Sun
Originally shown in 2019 at the Jogja Biennale, Ode to the Sun was the third instalment of the 'Timur Merah Project'. The work immersed the viewer in a multisensory environment announced by the smell of turmeric and herbs in Prologue, which was exhibited on the floor of the gallery space. This work symbolised the titular 'sun' beneath her heroic female Kamasan canvases, into which the artist wrote traditional Kakawin text or Balinese narrative poetry. The canvases above wrapped around in concentric circles, rewriting traditional male-centric Indonesian narratives and commenting on the Baliseering politics that reinforced them.
In 2020, Sasmita was commissioned to paint Tales of Nowhere for the Children Art Space in Museum MACAN, Jakarta.
