OBLIVION
As I wrote the visual narrative for these images, I became more and more concerned with human instability in space, and with the inescapable fleeing of time. Unconsciously, since I run into Borges’ poem after I had finished my project, my intention was to captivate that prophetic memory, the length of time over which remembering extends.
Everness, by Jorge Luis Borges
One thing alone does not exist—oblivion.
God, who saves the metal, saves the dross
and stores in His prophetic memory
moons that have still to come, moons that have shone.
Everything is there. The thousands of reflections
which between the dawn and the twilight
your face has left behind in many mirrors
and those faces it will go on leaving yet.
And everything is part of that diverse
and mirroring memory, the universe;
there is no end to its arduous corridors
and its doors close behind you as you go;
only at the other side of the sunset
you will see at last the Archetypes and Splendors.
Images: Oblivion Bed, Oblivion Chest, Oblivion Mirror, Oblivion Door, Oblivion Chair, and Night of Oblivion.
Exhibition was held at Studio Gallery, Washington, DC. Night of Oblivion was also exhibited at the Center for Fine Art Photography, Colorado, and Vermont Photo Place Gallery.
PHANTASMAGORIA
I was confronted with questions about my identity and by extension, my own existence. This process has left a deep imprint on my work as an artist.
Not being able to travel outside the US (2008-2012) compelled me to wander erratically through memories and obsessions. Thus, people, places and stories I left behind, came back to haunt my work like a pilgrimage of images. As I recalled Indonesian proverbs and legends, the rich and fantastical mythology of my childhood paraded in my mind lie a living succession of quiet images on a contact sheet.
Images are: Rubik Sur-faces, Three Indonesian Proverbs, It’s not my home but I am taking it (1&2), Wreck-age, Displaced Object (six images).
Phantasmagoria exhibition was held at the Studio Gallery, Washington, DC, 2011. Rubik Sur-faces was exhibited at the Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport (APG). Furthermore, Displaced Object was exhibited at Maryland Federation of Art, VAB Gallery-New Jersey. Indonesian Proverb and It’s not my house but I am taking it was exhibited at the Vermont Photo Place Gallery.
This exhibition was reviewed by Washington City Paper, and NPR-WAMU.
RE-VISIT
All of these images: the wing on the beach, the man carrying a mannequin’s leg, the man with an umbrella, the boy carrying an umbrella, and the winged woman holding a white egg were taken in the fall of 1997. At the time, I was a first year graduate student at American University, studying film and photography.
As I look at the original images, I nostalgically see and feel the road I have traveled. I recognize I can never return to that state of mind, that state of being and especially, that state of seeing. I may have lost my innocent youth, but I have gained a newfound way of seeing and feeling that continues to shape the images I see in my mind's eye and through the camera lens.
These images signify loss and rebirth. One day these new images will also drift into memory, and serve their part in become inspirations for new photography — new life.
Re-Visit: 15 Year in the fall of 2012 I shot feathers taken from the wings on the beach I had photographed 15 years before.
Re-Visit: 19 Years In the Fall of 2016 I returned to the same location, after midnight (I like to say “nocturnally,”) and photographed these objects using expired and discontinued TMAX 3200 film.
Re-Visit: 20 Years To get the grainy, celestial look I wanted, I overdeveloped the film in these images from Fall 1997 and Spring 2017 Two hours into 2017 I received a message from Indonesia: a friend had passed away. We'd known each other since we were six years old -- she was the winged woman I had photographed 20 years before.
We grew up together in Jakarta and, later, in D.C. We flew together all over the world, shared time together, and then we grew apart. I am haunted by the unspoken words and the blank persistent silence between us. You are gone…I’ve lost you…But your wings remain...
Re-Visit is on going project.
Re-Visit was exhibited at Studio Gallery, Washington, DC, and Center for Fine Art Photography, Colorado.
This exhibition was reviewed by Washington City Paper.
CRYOS
“Cryonics” is derived from the Greek kryos and refers to the low-temperature preservation of humans and animals that can no longer be sustained by contemporary medicine, with the hope that healing and resuscitation may be possible in the future.
How long does an image last?
As a photographer I yearn to capture fleeting moments of life and preserve them forever in images. In every frame, a picture is frozen and a scene is held in time and space, transforming the impermanent into permanent, and the momentary into momentous.
Cryos gives me the opportunity to elaborate further on this preoccupation by focusing on the opposite: the ephemeral and the perishable. I used ice to cast and maintain fragmented images of myself thus creating frames within frames and photos within photos whose depth, clarity, dimension and shape changed during the process itself.
While I was working on this project, shooting on Kodak slide films, Eastman Kodak Co. filed for bankruptcy, adding a new and unexpected layer of temporality to my work.
How long does an image last? …… An eternity and a blink of the eye.
These 12 images have been exhibited at Studio Gallery-Washington, D.C., Marlboro Gallery, PGCC, Maryland, and Atlanta Photography Group Gallery.
This exhibition has been reviewed by Washington Post, Washington Express, Washington City Paper, and NPR-WAMU.