Arus Kecil yang Tersesat / A Lost Little Current

2025

Cyanotype on Paper, Handmade Lemongrass Leaf Paper, Transparent Glass & Wood Frame, Performance

A Lost Little Current imagines two `currents` at the crossroads of different directions and temporalities in the context of Indonesia’s post-colonial development in the New Order era and its relationship to the ecological changes around it. 

The first current is an ecological one, carrying life in the form of water to the living beings, one of which the farmers who lived and cultivated rice fields long before the development of the toll-road project began. This current takes shape through lemongrass leaves turned into handmade paper, carrying traces of the landscape within their fibers. The lemongrass leaves harvested from Leuwinanggung, one of the areas crossed by the construction of Indonesia’s first toll road Jagorawi, in 1972. As the river’s flow diminished and rice fields could no longer survive, residents turned to lemongrass as a resilient crop. Lemongrass becomes a symbol of how memory of place, agrarian desire, and ecological shifts are interwoven with one another.

The second current is the current of modernization, one that believes speed is essential for propelling a newly developing nation. This current is represented in cyanotype photographic prints of the construction and inauguration of the Jagorawi toll road. In these images, the representation of the New Order as a military regime supporting development is clearly depicted through the footage of the events shown – a representation commonly encountered during its time (1968 – 1998). In an attempt to shift and re-imagine this narrative, a fictional figure – the grass-being – quietly enters each scene, embodying the agrarian body’s effort to survive, to bend, to keep adapting amid the relentless, anthropocentric development ambitions.