Ztampfilicious

For the first time in quite a long time, I will be celebrating the Chinese New Year in my hometown Jakarta, with my parents and extended family!

Chinese New Year in Indonesia happens during the height of the rainy season, with the threat of flood never far away. This year is not so bad for us – unlike last year when the water rose up to 2 meter high and my parents had to evacuate for almost two months.

Jakarta was flooding pretty badly when I arrived last Sunday, 19 Jan. Within the next couple of day, we had to evacuate to my auntie’s home. We had to ride on a rubber dinghy to the nearest road where cars could pass by. It was quite difficult to get the dinghy as everyone wanted to evacuate by then. After waiting for almost four hours, we managed to rent one and things went smoothly from then on.

We were lucky that the flood receded very soon and we were glad to be able to go home after just two days! It was nice to spend time with my auntie too. All in all, it wasn’t so bad :). We are very lucky indeed as some area were flooded very badly!

Oh so many things to catch up! I’ve been on a 2-week trip to my home town Jakarta, Indonesia for a collective exhibition I was invited to participate in. I enjoyed my time in Jakarta meeting old and new friends, getting some of the gossips on the local artscene, spending time with my old folks and my youngest brother and his expectant wife.

The exhibition itself is called: “Latitudes in Transit: Indonesian and Mexican Women Artists“, organized by the Embassy of Mexico in Jakarta and shown in the National Gallery there. I have three works in this exhibition. Just click the image below to see them. To see works by some other participating artists, check out this album on my Facebook. There are some really interesting arts there! All by women artists! Enjoy!

Once back in Hong Kong, I’ve been busy with a new art project, for another collective art exhibition in a gallery in Jakarta. I had a friend visiting and staying with us for a week too. Between this and that, I haven’t got chance to work on any new Ztampf! stuff… But don’t worry, I’ll start working on it soon ;)

So on Monday, 21 July 2008 we were working on the exhibition display. I got there to early – and the others were late so I ended up waiting for quite some time. Fortunately the gallery is situated near a lot of restaurants and supermarket so I could hang out somewhere munching some snack :).

Guess what! I met a fellow digiscrapper in person for the first time ever! Yup! Who is she then, you might ask. Well, it’s none other than my dear former Z!Girl, Matisha! She happened to be in Jakarta with her family for a vacation so we decided to meet up and she offered to document the process of me setting up my work for this exhibition. I happily accepted her offer and boy, look at the photos she took… they’re just amazing. I love her angles – she’s a great photographer! And she’s such a nice person too – I immediately felt familiar with her like we’ve met before. Well, we met online and been in touch for a few years of course – but still, meeting in person is different. I’m so glad we met :).

Here are some of the photos she took:

She had to leave before we finish setting up so unfortunately there’s no wonderful documentation for the rest of the works but I am very happy with what we have now. Thanks for your great photos, Matisha :). I really appreciate them!

We finished setting up for the day by around 10:30 p.m. There were still some minor adjustments to be made. My new painting was yet to be stretched on a frame too.

The last photo here was taken by Hendro Wiyanto, the curator.

So I’m back in my parents house in Jakarta, in my old room that keeps on changing here and there whenever I come back.

I left my home in Hong Kong at 7:15 a.m. to catch the 7:30 a.m. airport bus and I got to the airport on time. I checked-in online the day before, not sure what to expect. Got to the airport with my luggage and my rolled painting to find a very long queue under the sign “Self Check-In Drop Off Bags”. Hmmm… I thought it supposed to be shorter? Turned out that the queue moved pretty fast – faster than conventional check-in anyway. I was happy as my suitcase got checked-in without any fuss although it’s a bit over-weight and that they let me carry my painting to the cabin (it’s 54″ long, about 2.5″ in diameter).

The flight itself was pretty uneventful. I was hoping I could sleep all the way through the 4.5 hours flight as I only got less than 2 hours sleep the night before but there were too many interruptions so I arrived in Jakarta totally zonked. Had to wait forever to get my suitcase. I was beginning to get worried when it finally appeared. Pheeew!

The driver from the SIGIarts Gallery met me up and took me to the gallery in Jl. Mahakam in Kebayoran Baru straight way. It’s a brand new gallery with nice, spacious white space. Rachel, the owner of the gallery came out to welcome me and introduced me to the staff members whom I’ve been in contact with by emails. They’re all very friendly and some were acually from the same art institute I graduated from. Nice! To my great relief and joy, Rachel offered to take me for late lunch which I instantly agreed too enthusiastically.

Lunch was terrific! It’s at a Menado restaurant not for from the gallery. They had a live music playing Menado traditional numbers there – very unusual at 3:30 pm! The food was fantastic: spicy grilled seafood in traditional Menado manner – just what I like best! And it was very cheap too – especially compared to Hong Kong but even by Jakarta standard it was relatively cheap. I will definitely be back there. I should have gotten their name card – I forgot the name of the restaurant now, it’s in Menado language which is very different from the Indonesian. Next time I’ll make sure to get one!

We had a nice chat during lunch too, the topic ranged from art and exhibition matters to some hilarious personal anecdotes. The opening is on this Friday, July 25th – and I’m looking forward to it! Click the images below to see them larger:

Now that we’re both full, we went back to the gallery. Hendro the curator was already waiting for us and we proceed with discussion about the placement of my works. I am the only one showing three dimentional objects in this exhibition. The other artists are Ugo Untoro (paintings), Jose Legaspi (paintings) and Melati Suryodarmo (photographs of her performances). They are such amazing artists, it’s my honor to have my works shown alongside theirs.

So I unpacked some of the works I brought with me from Hong Kong and re-assembled them. It wasn’t easy to decide the placement of each but we managed to have some kind of preliminary arrangement which might work. Tomorrow we’ll start the real setting up! How exciting!

It was dark by the time I got to my childhood home by 8:30 p.m. It was good to see my parents again. Last time I saw them was in December last year. They’re both well enough and we enjoyed a nice chat catching up. They enjoyed the things I brought for them too :).