press release
Exploring the fluid borders between the body and its environment, Germany-based Indonesian performance artist Melati Suryodarmo will be opening her first solo exhibition in Kuala Lumpur with a piece entitled 'I Love You' at Central Market Annexe on 17 April 2008. Interacting and moving with a glass platform, Suryodarmo repeats, 'I love you' for the duration of the two-hour long performance.
In tandem with the opening act, the exhibition will showcase selected documentations of Suryodarmo's past performances in photography and video. Documented works include performance photographs from her Death series, as well as video excerpts of Exergie - butter dance, My Fingers Are the Triggers and her most recent work Perception of Pattern in Timeless Influence.
Absurd yet poignant, this landmark event will introduce the KL art scene to one of the most promising and relevant artist working in the performance medium.
Suryodarmo will also be conducting an artist's talk and workshop on performance art during her visit; Artist's Talk on 19 April 2008 at the Central Market Annexe and Workshop on 20 April 2008 at Rimbun Dahan Artist Residency.
biography
Germany-based Indonesian performance artist Melati Suryodarmo is recognised today for her long durational performances using the body and its environment to create what she calls 'a concentrated level of intensity'. She has performed widely all over the world, with recent participation in the Venice Biennale Dance Festival (2007), eBent 07 Festival in Barcelona, Accione 06 in Madrid, International Performance Art Festival in Toronto (2004), as well as shows in New York, Paris, Barcelona, Bali, Singapore and Sydney.
From 1994-2001, she attended the Hoshschule fuer Bildende Kueste in Braunschweig, Germany where she studied under renowned Butoh dancer Anzu Furukawa and acclaimed Seventies performance pioneer Marina Abramovic. Since then, she has continued her postgraduate program under the tutelage of Marina Abramovic where she has developed a performance vocabulary that is as intense and challenging as her predecessor's.
In these performances, Suryodarmo engages in seemingly redundant actions - dancing on butter, communicating with rabbits, pumping balloons to the tune of Elvis Presley - combining both her arresting physicality with the foibles of her struggle. The result is often absurd though no less heroic, as we come to see her fragility redeemed by the tenacity of her will in what Emanuela Nobile Mino calls her 'poetic of overcoming'.
