Sri Astari Rasjid

In 2011, she returned to the idea of amulet or jimat, to shield her soul, and made not one, but five kebayas using grey aluminum in an installation named Armors for the Soul.

At the end of 2015, a new era in the nation had set in with the newly elected president Jokowi, and her appointment as the first female ambassador with an artist’s background was forthcoming. She created Armor for Change, a 3.5-meter-high kebaya sculpture embellished with just one enormous butterfly brooch to denote the change taking place in her personal life and the country as President Jokowi appointed an unprecedented number of four female ministers.

A sense of urgency was palpable in her retrospective exhibition titled Yang Terhormat Ibu (Dear Mother) at the Cultural Centre of Gajah Mada University in Yogyakarta, which was held from 27 February to 5 March 2016. Here she pointed at the significance of the cultural and the spiritual at a time when urbanity and the influx of social media and the mix of global voices are dampening the inner voice of humankind.

As Astari’s path evolved in the arts, so has her personal ‘becoming’- a term coined in the theory of American psychologist Gordon Allport which denotes that a person evolves or ‘becomes’ after gaining new knowledge and experience. Such was evident in her praxis as ambassador in Bulgaria, Albania and Macedonia, where her cultural diplomacy came to fruition.

Astari’s oeuvre often has in-depth meaning related to the present time. In fact, her works are often visionary.  The installation titled Home for instance, is a huge installation cage that was reworked from the branded Kelly bag and was originally a gender critique on the vision that relegated women to the house. But ironically, today it is the safety symbol for all humankind when the Corona virus is pushing us to stay at home.

The same visionary quality comes through in the painting Contestants which seems to predict the future world powers as being China, Indonesia and India. The painting features three elegant women each in their national dress, the Chinese cheongsam, the Indonesian sarong and kebaya, and the Indian sari. Painted against a background of images of the Borobudur Temple, and the Wall Street Journal with Index notations, it was like a prediction of the potential economic powers.

Astari has always believed in the power of female energy. For her work in the Indonesia Pavilion of the Venice Biennale 2013 she created a Pendopo, a Javanese architectural structure built of columns and open on all sides, it was traditionally a ritual space in the sultan’s palace or kraton. The pendopo in Astari’s experience is loaded with sakti, the sacred power hidden deep within. It is a metaphor for the deep sea where the intangible power of the Queen, or sakti, resides. “We will find sakti by going deep into the self,” she said.

 Astari’s latest work again deals with female power that is called upon to pacify the turbulence in the unruly world of the Covid 19 Pandemic. A performance installation, it should work like a Ruwatan, the ritual held in Javanese communities to make a better world. Cultural in its execution it is conceptually of contemporary importance, including issues of global unity and plurality. Nine huge two-meter tall golek sculptures represent women from various backgrounds: Siti Asiyah, wife of Pharaoh, Mariyam, mother of Jesus, Siti Khadijah, wife of the prophet Muhammad, Saraswati, Hindu goddess of knowledge and creativity, Siti Fatima, daughter of the Prophet Muhammad, Siti Hajar, wife of Abraham, Tahireh, a prominent figure in Bahai religion, Kwan Im, Buddhist goddess. 

CB /23 Feb 2022