residency: August–October 2017

Irwan Ahmett and Tita Salina (Indonesia)

  • Irwan Ahmett
    • He is an interdisciplinary artist. His work lies somewhere between art and design. In 1997 he finished the Jakarta Institute of Art. From 2003 he and Tita Salina have been running the Ahmett Salina Studio in Jakarta.

  • Tita Salina
    • Her works include elaborate narrative performances and videos. In her creations, she focuses on important global and local issues, from the gentrification of cities to environmental pollution. She transforms documentary video footage into complex epic scenery.
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  • Over the last several years the artists have joined forces in long-term projects related to the local Indonesian communities creating documentary films, organizing workshops and interventions, and, through this, changing the local everyday life for the better, whilst at the same time slowing down the fierce, capitalist transformations of places subjected to the brutal laws of the market. They worked together in the red light district in north Jakarta, where they conducted an informational campaign on contraceptives and workshops on architecture and poor-design in the Kampong district (housing-estates of low social and economic status). The artists also collaborated on a project, that lasted several years, that spread awareness on the subject of energy consumption in Indonesia, whose hundreds of millions of inhabitants are dependent on scooters and large trucks for transportation. In the recent years, along with over a dozen young artists and designers, they have formed an informal local housing fraternity and project team, which is characterized by energy and enthusiasm for the work they do.
    • In the framework of artistic residencies at the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, the artists will be collaborating with the curators of the Gotong Royong. Things we create together exhibition, on the particular description of the show’s title (in Indonesian “common cause”) in the context of practices of the country that they come from. Also, the artists will work on a choreographic presentation of their long-running artistic activities within the public program of the exhibition. 

 

 

  • This residency is financed by the City of Warsaw.