The exhibition’s theme and message are a response to the moments of social, political, and environmental uncertainty.
Photo by Amelia Watson.
The UVic Legacy Art Gallery is hosting WARA-WARA, an exhibition of street art and graffiti from Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The exhibition will be running free of charge from Sept. 16. to Dec. 5.
The WARA-WARA exhibition was brought together through the collaboration of Survive! Garage — a community-run alternative space and art shop in Kasihan Indonesia, as well as UVic Professor of Pacific & Asian Studies Dr. Richard Fox, the University of Victoria Art Collections, and 21 participating artists — all from Yogyakarta, and four collectives.
Survive! Garage founder Bayu Widodo said they started with 30 or 35 artists, but had to narrow the number down due to not having a large enough space.
“We curated [the exhibition] to be 21 artists all with different styles, different characters, and techniques…. The connection between each artist is [that] we work in the same city,” he said.
The exhibition’s title, “Wara-Wara,” is a Javanese term meaning an announcement, warning or public call. This concept aligns with the exhibition’s theme and message — a response to the moments of social, political, and environmental uncertainty.
“It means announcement, and traditionally in Java, it’s how to call in the happiness and the sadness,” said Widodo. “In this exhibition, we want to show what the city looks like from the street art.”
The forms of art featured in the gallery include photographs, tapestries, prints, paintings, and video installations in Javanese, amongst others. The installations and artists in the exhibition explore themes of resistance against oppressive regimes, anti-war movements, environmentalism, and representing power through art and community.
A piece exhibited titled “Survive! Attacked” by Patub Porx, also a co-founder of Survive! Garage is a comic, depicting an attack committed by a religious organization against an event held at Survive! Garage in 2016. The idea to depict the tragedy in the form of a long comic came from Fox, Porx said.
“This artwork is not just visual art, but is a kind of archive,” he said.
Porx also shared that he is currently drawing more panels for the project.
“We hope … students visit our space to learn about the collective … as well as life in Yogyakarta,” said Widodo. “As artists, we need to be doing what we love, and then we can continue [to develop] more and more as artists.”
The WARA-WARA exhibition will be available to visit for free Wednesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Legacy Art Gallery Downtown.
