Artist : Mella
Jaarsma
Genre : Installation
and Paintings
Period : April 7 till
May 7
Everyday, 9.00AM till 10.00PM
Location : Gaya Fusion of Senses
Jl. Raya Sayan, Ubud
Tel: 979252
Mella Jaarsma is a Performance, Installation and Painting
artist who was born in 1960, in Emmeloord, The Netherlands.
Initially, she studied at the Fine Art Academy ‘Minerva’,
Groningen, The Netherlands, from 1978 to 1984, then, from
1984 to 1986, she continued her studies at the Art Institute
of Indonesia in Yogyakarta, Java. She has been living and
working in Yogyakarta ever since. Mella has performed and
exhibited extensively throughout Indonesia and Europe, plus,
Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, Iran, Korea, Australia and America,
in various solo and group exhibitions.
The problem with Performance Art, and a lot of Installation
Art that derives from performance work, is that it is a time-specific
art form that must been seen and appreciated during the time-sequence
within which it is created. Work that derives from this performance,
and is then installed in an exhibition space, can be reduced
to simple documentation without the presence of the artist,
or performer, to activate it. Sadly, this is pretty much the
case with Mella Jaarsma’s exhibition ‘Shelter
Me’ at the Gaya Gallery.
Currently, Mella’s work is concerned with identity and
how we clothe, shelter and express our personal identities
for various public, economic, social, environmental and political
situations. Mella says this of her work: “We wear a
second-skin everyday that indicates our membership in specific
groups of our cultural, social and religious surroundings.
Creating shelters are related to the history of mankind. Shelters
are human habitats, physical and psychological territories
found all around the world, providing comfort and protection.
Civilization has layered the shelter with many meanings connected
with wealth, status, religion, family life, notions of community
and privacy. The shelter is an extension of our own body,
clothes, and personal space. The second-skin, that we wear,
is like a house which we can appear from or hide in, and which
we have to be ready to inhabit or to leave”.
The exhibition presents four human-scale shelters. A Chinese
shelter, a shelter with tattoo images, a shelter made from
bark and a shelter with images from Iran. The Chinese shelter
resembles a pagoda shrine, complete with a shelf for offerings.
The tattoo shelter is creepy as it seems like human skin,
sewn together by some crazed psycho-killer. The Bark shelter
recalls the humpies of Aboriginal Australians and other aspects
of Outback Australian architecture, while the Iran shelter
brings to mind issues of female emancipation linked with the
Muslim custom of Purdah. Two shelters are self-supporting
and free-standing, the other two lean against the walls of
the gallery. The structural elements are of unfinished timber,
and printed fabrics, materials and clothes are draped, stretched
or hung from each shelter like clothes on a hanger or a primitive
shop mannequin. Do clothes ‘make’ the man or woman?
Can shelters carry the symbols of identification and signification?
Yes, they can, for they acknowledge our individuality, gender,
race, nationality, values and politics. But, Mella’s
shelters, displayed in a gallery as ‘art’ objects,
removed from their performance environment, don’t really
work as sculpture. They are more akin to ‘costume’
and require the ‘theatricality’ of public performance.
Also displayed in the exhibition are a series of gouaches
and paintings derived from the shelters, and the artist’s
experiences while inhabiting them. These works are so strongly
linked to their origins that it is impossible to appreciate
them divorced from their inspiration. They are, essentially,
documentation of Mella’s on-going performances in her
current work. There are, however, some paintings that have
been abstracted enough, from their source, which can stand
alone as individual canvases, and these display Mella’s
strong sense of composition, balance and fine painting techniques,
resulting in a variety of pleasing textures, shapes and lines.
‘Aceh Shelter’ is a harmonious composition of
highly-textured green cubes and rectangles. ‘Khusus
Konsultant’ is a delightful piece of abstract expressionism
in which only a pair of eyes are recognizable, while ‘Peranakan
Shelter’ includes a simply executed painting of a human
torso and arm, which demonstrates Mella’s mastery of
more traditional aspects of line drawing and rendering. Finally,
‘The Designer’ simplifies the forms of a shelter
into a pleasing composition of dark lines placed over a ingeniously
textured background.
When viewing the exhibition there can be no doubt that this
is the work of a talented artist. Mella Jaarsma’s art
shows a high degree of intellectualization joined with the
ability to express these ideas through design, assemblage
and presentation, but, as an installation and documentation
assessment of her on-going performance work, you get the distinct
impression that something is ‘missing’ from the
show. It is the artist herself. Her presence is essential,
and crucial, for this work to succeed and go beyond the merely
peripheral.
