Born in 1968, Titarubi, the founder of iCAN (Indonesia Contemporary Art Network), has been an artist since 1988. Based in Yogyakarta, she works in various media and different genres such as assemblage and installation. She has participated in several regional biennales and has exhibited in Germany, Australia and Korea. In ‘Bodyscape’, nine suspended fibreglass figures are wrapped tightly in elaborately patterned lace. By dressing the androgynous figures in this manner – in a body-hugging and feminine fabric – Titarubi is challenging entrenched socio-cultural politics of gender, clothing and the gaze. In addition, the work addresses the particularly fraught issue of what is deemed ‘proper’ or ‘morally acceptable’ in representations of the body, adding another layer to the ongoing debate in Indonesian contemporary art about the limits of artistic expression in the representation of the human body, as well as cultural and social mores.
