Artist-in-Residence Program Period #1 2023
We are grateful to announce that this year Cemeti is back with a regular residency program after a two-year vacuum during the Covid-19 pandemic. During the three-month residency period April-June 2023, the residency living space and studio will be occupied by three artists, Arif Furqan (Indonesia), Samboleap Tol (Netherlands) and Roberta Joy Rich (Australia). During this residency, Doni Ahmad, a curator from Bandung who was selected through an open call for curators period 2023, will accompany the process of the three artists in exploring and diving into daily life and art in Yogyakarta. In addition, FX Harsono (a visual art artist and member of Cemeti’s board) takes part in this residency as a supervisor supporting program development.
Welcome and thank you to the artists and curators of the Cemeti Residency period 2023 who have been willing to rekindle conversations and exchanges with all of us through a number of encounters in daily activities and residency public programs. Thank you to the public FRIENDS of CEMETI for your kind support and willingness to always accompany, witness, and provide feedback for our programs.
Cemeti Residency Program Period 2023 is supported by the Mondriaan Fonds, Debra Porch Award: Visual Arts Residency – Australian Council for the Art, and Prince Claus Fund.
Artists Biography
Samboleap Tol (Netherland)
Samboleap Tol (1990) is focused on creating space for herself to be semi-public about her personal socio-historical and political grievances and expressing ways for reckoned closure – with her peers as her primary witnesses. Her practice of reckoning is derived from her ongoing investigations into Theravadin Buddhist traditions and Indiginist Khmer animist practices as well as her conversations with her peers and their respective religious practices. In line with her Khmer arts lineage, she tries to make sense of her different sets of investigations through performance and storytelling, using music and drawings, and hopes that anyone listening recognizes she is telling tales of willpower, faith and dignity.
Tol is a graduate of Piet Zwart Institute’s MFA programme (Rotterdam). She studied fine arts at UAL’s Central Saint Martins (London) & Sint Lucas School of Arts & Design (Antwerp); Media and Communication at Erasmus University (Rotterdam) & University of Sydney. She is currently a research associate at The Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation (TrAIN), University of Arts London.
Roberta Joy Rich (Australia)
Roberta Joy Rich is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Narrm (Melbourne). Roberta often references her diaspora southern African identity and experiences as a platform to interrogate constructs of ‘race’, gender, Western singularity and notions of ‘authenticity’. Utilising language, text, sometimes satire, archives and storytelling, she draws focus from communal knowledge systems, historical, socio-political and popular culture epistemologies, in her video, installation, sound and mixed media projects. Roberta is interested in re-framing archival materials and the possibilities of anarchiving, with the aim to deconstruct colonial modalities and propose empowering narratives of self-determination.
Since completing her MFA at Monash University in 2013, Roberta has exhibited widely across settler nation Australia’s east coast and internationally in South Africa. Her recent exhibition ‘The Purple Shall Govern’ at Footscray Community Arts in partnership with the Australia Centre for Contemporary Art explored conditions of power and access in public space, reflecting on systemic forces of oppression by colonial governments endured by First Nations and Black people across contexts of Australia and South Africa.
Roberta is also interested in bridging conversations and collaborations between the African diaspora and the African continent, co-curating And she was wearing trousers at Arts House that explored women’s resistance narratives in southern African histories. Roberta is currently completing the Counterflows program that included visiting the Sharjah Biennial 15 and is developing new work supported by ACMI and the Ian Potter Cultural Trust. For her Cemeti Residency, Roberta wishes to expand her understanding of Javanese culture that has informed contemporary southern African history and identity, in hope to unearth and enrich such threads within her practice.
Arif Furqan (Indonesia)
Lecturer and researcher working with photography and archive. Since 2011, he has been experimenting with photography using various approaches exploring the issue of memory, home, family, and mobility. He is also a part of Flock Project, a collective exploring the possibilities of photographic works through printed matters. He received the Prince Claus Seed Award 2021 on his project Unhistoried—an archive-based project on Indonesian family photograph and archive during the New Order Regime (1960-1990s). Now, he is currently doing research and artistic exploration utilizing archive as the medium.
Biography of Curator and Program Supervisor
Doni Ahmad
Doni Ahmad graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts and Design ITB in 2012. From 2014-2016, he organised the Beta Test program: Solo Exhibition of young artists at Ruang Gerilya, Bandung. He compiled the book Liplap: 35 Artists under 35 y/o with Adhisuryo in 2017. After continuing his education at the ITB postgraduate program (majoring in art history and aesthetics), Doni initiated the Rakarsa organisation in Bandung.
During the pandemic, Doni focused on translating the book Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation by Gilles Deleuze (publisher Gang Kabel) with Syarif Maulana. Since 2022, Doni has been involved in historical research on Hidden Connections with Ferial Afiff under Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. He is now actively organizing art programs at Gelanggang Olah Rasa, Bandung.
FX Harsono
FX Harsono (b. 1948) is a seminal figure in the Indonesian contemporary art scene. He continually updates his artistic language to new social and cultural contexts. Harsono’s artworks reveal the disconcerting situation of minorities, the socially underprivileged in Indonesia, against the backdrop of Indonesia’s history and political development.
FX Harsono studied painting at STSRI (Sekolah Tinggi Seni Rupa Indonesia) “ASRI” (Akademi Seni Rupa Indonesia), Yogyakarta, from 1969 to 1974 and at IKJ (Jakarta Art Institute) from 1987 to 1991. He has been a lecturer in the Faculty of Art and Design, Pelita Harapan University, Tangerang (West Java), since 2005. Harsono is an active art critic and regularly writes about social issues and the development of contemporary art. He was awarded the 2014 Prince Claus Award from the Prince Claus Fund, the Netherlands; the Anugrah Adhikarya Rupa 2014 Award from the Minister of Tourism and Creative Economy, Indonesia; and the Joseph Balestier Award for the Freedom of Art from the Embassy of the United States of America and Art Stage in Singapore in 2015.
CEMETI 