Arus Kecil yang Tersesat / A Lost Little Current

2025

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

A Lost Small Current imagines two streams intersecting at a crossroads of direction and time within the frame of urban development. The first is the ecological stream—the river—that carries water as a source of life for rice fields and the farmers who cultivate them. The second is the stream of modernization—the highway—that carries the vision of development through the vehicles rushing above it.

At a certain moment in time, these two currents meet; and when that happens, the stronger stream inevitably displaces the weaker one, transforming everything connected to it.

This work reflects conversations with the local residents of Leuwinanggung about the disappearance of their river due to the construction of Indonesia’s first highway in 1972. This infrastructure project gradually reshaped both the ecological and social landscapes of the community. Today, fields of lemongrass in Leuwinanggung have replaced the rice paddies that once thrived, now dried up with the loss of water flow from upstream.

The work combines handmade paper crafted from lemongrass leaves cultivated by farmers in Leuwinanggung with archival photographs of the construction of Indonesia’s first highway in 1972, printed using the cyanotype technique. Onto each archival image, a fictional grass-human figure is inserted, attempting to infiltrate and weave a new narrative into the images presented.