DEWI : A Solo Exhibition by Nadiah Bamadhaj

Drawing from Indonesian postcolonial ideologies and studies of Javanese mythologies, what initially began as a search for the power she lacked in these narratives, evolved into a discovery of the power that she had. Bamadhaj fell upon the goddess figure of Durga, a subject whose historical portrayal evidences the gradual patriarchal portrayal of complex female characters. Across her representation in Javanese, Indian, Nepalese and Tibetan contexts, Durga morphs variously between symbols of creativity, abundance, light, death, power, and anger. The artist saw in her figure an embodiment of paradoxes, not in dualities but as a combination of many elements inside one female being.

The exhibition, representing the artist’s first formal return to sculpture in twenty years, includes drawings of talismanic forms and landscapes in charcoal and gold leaf, created with the intention of introducing light, colour, and play into her work. These drawings form the environment or origins of a series of suspended sculptures crafted from resin, stainless steel, buffalo and goat hyde, light fixtures, and brass. In total, these works express Bamadhaj’s search for the figure/figures of Dewi in sculptural form, and the ways in which the personal and the collaborative come to shape the goddess’ polymorphic representation in her works.