Aku Pingin Crita Dawa
Nanging Apa Kowe Kuwawa? Aku Kuwawa?

Aku Ingin Cerita Panjang
Tapi Apakah Kamu Sanggup? Aku Sanggup?

I Want to Tell a Long Story
But Can You? Can I?

Solo exhibition at Kedai Kebun Forum

2018

All happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way
(Leo Tolstoy)

Aku Pingin Crita Dawa – Nanging Apa Kowe Kuwawa? Aku Kuwawa? – is a soliloquy. A woman’s conversation within herself. It’s about many things that are never singular. She took a room that is familiar to us: a house, yard, backyard, which in the hands of Dian Suci is never intact anymore.

Through her paintings, Dian Suci seems to tell a long story even though she knows that she can’t, or at least feels unable. She also doubted whether anyone could listen to her. Hence she chooses the form of soliloquy — chatting with herself. Arranging the house, yard, backyard and objects in it into a meditation room. Nobody’s there. Except for herself — who sometimes multiplied.

She also seems to be composing a poem through her paintings. She selects and places objects in her image as a poet chooses words and puts them in a poem. So as a poem, her painting is a feeling of reality and moments that are bigger than herself. As poetry, it appears small and simple but encapsulates invaluable complexity. Quiet but as quiet as a bottomless well.

Moreover at the same time Dian’s paintings are a stage. It was like recording a performance scene. And once again: a soliloquy performance in which she was the one-women show there. Her paintings are theatrical fragments or dance excerpts.

Soliloquies, poetry and stage are the key words that paved the way for me to enjoy Dian Suci Rahmawati’s work. And it seems that she is right there: re-reading herself in a room called household. Paintings are perhaps just a way for Dian to tell the stories when words can’t go over fences or over taboo walls. Here the image is just a ploy, a longer and sharper way to reveal a reality that always fails to become a complete sentence. The image is of a ring road.

Gunawan Maryanto