HER space: February 2021

A Date at Museum Macan

When I was in school, staring at a display of art for hours at the museum, gallery or exhibition didn't make me fascinated. I even couldn't stand looking at the artwork for more than 15 minutes!

However, as I studied architecture, museums and galleries intrigued my soul! When I visit a museum or gallery, I even can spend my time looking at one particular work for an hour! It is enchanting to discover the story behind every piece of art displayed, how do the artists sculpt it, wondering what they were thinking as they were making it, were they sad, happy, or frustrated? I love to imagine many scenarios they had experienced in order to create such a masterpiece of art.

In December 2019, I went on a trip to Jakarta to watch my favorite singer's concert. Since I had free time before the show begins, I decided to go on a museum date near my hotel. I am in a committed relationship with myself if you are wondering who was my date partner.

For your information, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara (Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara - Museum MACAN) is an art museum and institution located in Jakarta that provides public access for modern and contemporary art collection from Indonesia and around the world.

The ticket price for an adult costs about 90k rupiah. If you don't want to queue, you can buy the ticket through Traveloka.

At first, I planned to enjoy breakfast or have a snack before exploring the museum. But, since I came earlier, around 8.30 AM, many restaurants in the building were still closed, the only one open at that moment was Starbucks, which is not my cup of tea. So, I just went into the museum. Because there were still very few visitors in the morning, I was able to explore the museum more freely.

Generally, museums or galleries always have a guide or path that we must follow sequentially in order to enter another room or section. But in Museum Macan, visitors are given the freedom to explore the museum at will.

Before visiting Museum Macam, make sure you have checked their social media updates or visit their official website to see if any specific theme is being exhibited at that time because Museum Macan usually displays different works of art every time of period, depending on the theme.

The artworks that were displayed at that moment was based on the Sanskrit word "Kãla", which means "a fixed or right point of time, a space of time" intertwined with ideas of memories, experience, place, materiality, history, trauma, and death that redefining relationship between human and time.

As I led through the museum entrance, I would pretend and imagine to be one of the people who get lost in the landscape painted in the portraits. At that moment, for me, art captured a fantasy world, one that was more astonishing, marvelous, and fascinating that I have ever experienced.

Here are some of the portraits I took while visiting Museum Macan.

Tobacco Project (1999-2011)
as described

"Cigarettes are commonly understood as bad while art is good. Human being are dependent on both. Combining the two would generate a new force. When looking at it from another perspective and putting it in a different realm, I found it to be a completely new entity."

Book from the sky
as described

"Someone asked me why not carving "Book from the sky"? I also asked myself this question. I think the answer is: artists experience and experiment with art, we begin from a human curiosity - to continue carving this work forever would turn this experiment into a religion or philosophy. Artists focus on issues about people ."

Infinity Mirrored Room – Brilliance of the Souls (2014)
as described

"Belongs to an important body of 'Infinity Mirrored Rooms' which the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama first developed in 1965. Kusama moved to New York City from Tokyo in 1957, where her provocative and experimental works, including performance, film, sculpture, and painting, reflected the mood of the time, challenging conservative society with a sense of abandon and sexual freedom.

The artist had suffered from 'rijinsho', a depersonalization disorder, where her vision was filled with veils and hallucinations from an early age. On her return to Japan in 1973, Kusama entered a psychiatric hospital to manage this condition.

As well as dots, ideas, of infinity and obliteration are important concept in Kusama's work. This can be experimented in Infinity Mirrored Room – Brilliance of the Souls, a room covered with mirrors that creates an infinity chamber of reflections. The darkened room contains spheres of light, which transition in colour and intensity. Light is reflected on every surfaces of interior space and appears to go on forever- to the point of the disappearance. In Infinity Mirrored Room - the difference between form and space, inner self, and exterior world, appears to meld into one."

if you take a closer, these are actually scribble lines!