Through her long-term Timur Merah project, Citra Sasmita presents counter-narratives to Balinese artistic and literary canons rooted in visions of male heroism and decorative roles for women. Sasmita’s world is thus populated and ruled by strong women pushing back against the male gaze that came to underpin the colonial stranglehold on Balinese culture. Following the fall of the last Balinese kingdom in 1908, the Dutch introduced the policy of ‘Baliseering’, a strategy of cultural diplomacy intended to establish an ‘authentic’ Bali, in which the Balinese community were to carry out their cultural practices under Dutch supervision. Anti-colonial nationalists argued that the policy kept Bali as a ‘living museum’ that appealed to colonial aesthetics of the noble and exotic while obliterating Balinese self-determination and silencing the multiplicity of sources that constitute Balinese culture. The latter are visible in these works, reflecting the Kamasan Balinese painterly language formed over centuries through multiple processes of exchange along the travel and trade routes between India and South East Asia. In stark contrast to Kamasan painterly codes, the works whimsically depict women, fires, and various natural elements in a tableaux of pansexual energy, framed by lush textiles (derived from the complex trade networks around the Indonesian Islands involving India, China, and the arrival of Islam to the archipelago), flowing from an abundantly carved wooden frame (a tradition brought to Bali by Hindu Javanese carvers of the Majapahit Empire, seeking refuge from the expansion of Islam on their island). While rooted in these multiple genealogies of thinking, practising faith, and representing, the scenes are part of a contemporary process of imagining a secular and empowered mythology for a post-patriarchal future.

Works in the exhibition: The Stars and Ring of Fire (2023), antique wood carving hanger, fabric, acrylic on traditional Kamasan canvas, 179 × 103 cm. Courtesy  of the artist and Yeo Workshop Singapore; The Green Paradise (2023), antique wood carving hanger, fabric, acrylic on traditional Kamasan canvas, 165.5 × 117 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Yeo Workshop Singapore; Homo Luminous (2023), antique wood carving hanger, fabric, acrylic on traditional Kamasan canvas, 161.5 × 108 cm. Courtesy of the artist and JH & KH Collection, Singapore; Temple of God Fire (2023), antique wood carving hanger, fabric, acrylic on traditional Kamasan canvas, 157.5 × 108 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Junko Yoda, Singapore