Citra Sasmita: Into Eternal Land, Barbican, exhibition review: ‘Power that stretches across cultures’
Installation view of Timur Merah Project IX: Beyond the Realm of Senses (Allegory of the Archipelago). Photograph: Levi Fanan / Fundação Bienal de São Paulo / Citra Sasmita
Citra Sasmita is an Indonesian artist whose first solo UK exhibition at the Barbican offers a bold female take on the artistic traditions of her home country.
Into Eternal Land at the Curve gallery draws on narratives from the Indonesian mythologies, the Hindu Mahabharata and Dante’s Inferno to meditate on themes of heaven and hell, as lived by women.
The large-scale work on display includes beaded cow hides, sculpture, scroll paintings as well as embroidered textiles made in collaboration with women from West Bali using long-established practices.
Blood red is the dominant colour in the exhibition, which depicts birth, severed heads, volcanic eruptions and other scenes embued with turbulence.
These are interwoven with lyrical images of women evoking their various roles as herbalists, sexual beings, and creators.
Sasmita’s female figures dance, fly and embrace with a power that stretches across cultures.
Inverting patriarchal motifs, her art reclaims representation of and for women.
Citra Sasmita: Into Eternal Land runs until 21 April at the Barbican’s Curve gallery.