Ocula Conversation Bani Abidi: ‘What you see in my films is what I know’ A group of voices accompanies me in the exhibition. They are singing words I cannot comprehend, yet the warm tunes are familiar: folk songs, love songs, songs of longing. There are letters, too. They speak of the quotidian details of a soldier's life: the hardness of the war, sending money to the family, and longing for familiar landscapes, food,...
Ocula Report Aichi to Okayama: Art in Japan Looks to the Future 11 Oct 2019 : Stephanie Bailey for Ocula There has been a flurry of triennial and biennial art activity in Japan this year. The Aichi Triennale opened in Nagoya this August, sparking a national debate about the shutting down of a display of formerly censored works—the result of public backlash against a burnt image of Emperor Hirohito and a statue commemorating the women forced into...
Ocula Insight | Video Hans Hartung and Art Informel at Mazzoleni London (1 October 2019-18 January 2020) presents key works by the French-German painter while highlighting his connection with artists active in Paris during the 50s and 60s. In this video, writer and historian Alan Montgomery discusses Hartung's practice and its legacy.Born in Leipzig in 1904, Hans...
Since 1988, Cemeti Art House founded by Nindityo Adipurnomo and Mella Jaarsma, has been exhibiting and communicating the works of both Indonesian and foreign contemporary artists. Since the beginning of Cemeti Gallery in 1988, it has functioned as an exhibition, information, documentation and promotion centre for the visual arts. All the files, archive and network was lodged in 1995 at the Cemeti Art Foundation. Recently, the Cemeti Art Foundation has changed its name to Indonesian Visual Art Archive (IVAA). Cemeti Art House and IVAA function as two separate organizations, each with their own vision and funding. Cemeti Art House focuses on exhibitions, art projects, residencies and art management. IVAA focuses on documentation, education and information. We often work together and both organizations contribute to art discourse and art developments, locally, nationally as well as internationally.
Cemeti Art House’s main focus is stimulating art practices, art discourse and art management. Contemporary art in Indonesia can be seen as the form, concern, view and reflection of artists to issues developing in society. Through their work artists comment and depict general phenomena in society, whilst others express individual and personal approaches to their reality. These ideas and themes are expressed through a diverse range of media.
In 2010, Cemeti Art House launched a new platform in which the activities will revolve around and focus on reinventing ‘Art and Society’, emphasizing more alternative art practices that honour the ‘process’, rather than the ‘promotion’ of artists and art making.
