Maharani Mancanagara

(she/her)
b 1990, Padang, Indonesia
Lives and works in Bandung, Indonesia

After perusing her late grandfather’s diary in her university years, Maharani Mancanagara came to realise that he was a political prisoner exiled to Buru Island under the New Order regime (1966- 1998) in Indonesia. Intrigued by the incongruities between her grandfather’s notes and the official histories taught in school curricula, Mancanagara created works, or ‘reconstructed monuments’, that dealt with such contentious and forgotten histories—finding new ways to document the past. In the space between two oil lamps (lampu teplok), Mancanagara transcribes in near photographic detail a group portrait of Kartini–a proto- feminist figure in Indonesian history–and her sisters, who gaze back at the viewer. It appears to be a domestic scene, drawn onto unassuming pinewood boards. But the sizeable proportions of the piece lend the image an air of monumentality, allowing these women to occupy and reclaim a place in a national and visual history which has often manipulated their image to service patriarchal conceptions of an ideal Javanese femininity.

Rekonstruksi Daun Semanggi #2 2014
charcoal and assemblage on pinewood
100 x 150 cm