AIR MATA AIR

2017. Live art; stones, ink, water, paper
Joined by the crown, Georgetown Festival, curated by Sharon Cheah

Air mata air (“water eye water” in Bahasa Indonesia) is a live art work performed at George Town, Penang, Malaysia. In his exploration of land and its image, and the shared colonial past and present connection between Penang and Singapore, Widjaja invited visitors to join him in the mark-making process that used the stones from Fort Canning, Singapore’s first experimental gardens, with pigment mixed with water from the Botanic Gardens in Penang. The process, joining land and water in the form of ink marks on paper, informed the artist's contemplation of 'tanah' and 'air' (land and water respectively, and motherland when joined in Bahasa Indonesia).