Kuku Bima (Bima’s nail)
2020
Presented at Sesama Yogyakarta
Indonesia Art residency
Mengatasi masalah khusus, menambah semangat, gairah serta tenaga.
Being placed in a new environment evokes a rangeof emotions—fear, awe, joy, and anxiety. The urge to interpret everything through a European lensmeets the impossibility of finding clear answers.The only way forward is adaptation, reshapingimagination, beliefs, and perceptions. Through experiments with local materials and creative acts, I immersed myself in the environment and interpret-ed it personally.
One of the things that struck me most was theambiguity surrounding local men’s long nails. Theirmeaning varied across different beliefs—they weresaid to be weapons, status symbols, tools, rem-nants of forgotten traditions, or magical talismans.The search for a single truth highlighted the West-ern tendency to impose order on diverse customs.
Kuku Bima came to symbolize a reconfigurationof perception, where hidden rituals, beliefs, andcultural gestures shape everyday actions.