Forged Artwork, Missing the Golden Age of Essential Oils
reported: Liu Setiawan
Jakarta, December 5, 2024/Indonesia Media – Tempa, a husband and wife who are artists from Yogyakarta, promotes local culture and wisdom in Indonesian essential oils that have long entered the international market, even though they went bankrupt for a certain period. Tempa misses the glory days of Indonesian essential oils, so they express it in the form of an installation art work with the theme Capturing Aroma 2024. Their work is at the Basoeki Abdullah Art Award Competition Finalist Exhibition #5 at the National Gallery of Indonesia. “(Indonesian) essential oil fragrances used to be very famous, they were even sent to Bulgaria. Along with the development of the times, essential oils went bankrupt. Tempa wants to share their experiences, and flashback to the time when various essential oils (were) part of the amazing biodiversity,” the exhibition guide, Nunik, told the Editors.
Indonesia, a tropical country is home to a variety of plants including essential oils. Around 40 of the 99 types of essential oils worldwide grow in Indonesia. Essential oils, or better known as essential oils, refer to valuable compounds produced through the distillation process from various parts of plants, from seeds, flowers, fruits, stems, leaves, stems, bark, to roots or rhizomes. The volatile nature of essential oils causes this oil to also be called volatile oil, flying oil, aromatic oil or ethereal oil. “There are eight jars of essential oils (on display), and visitors can smell the aroma. The meaning of Tempa’s artwork is in the form of an arrangement that reflects the fragrance of roses, citronella, jasmine and so on,” said Nunik.
The work of capturing aroma was born from an art residency at the Indonesian atsiri house, as a citronella factory since 1963, an Indonesia-Bulgaria diplomatic project that was halted due to politics in 1965 until it was revived in 2015. The main approach in this work utilizes the stimulation of the senses of smell, sight and hearing to assemble information and build an imaginative narrative about the history of this place inspired by Anicka Yi’s view of aroma as a trigger for memory and visual projection. The next process, by believing in inanimate objects, such as the boiler and the Bulgarian rose, they are history and change, becoming symbols of diplomatic cooperation reflected in the morphological transformation and the stories attached to them. “The work (Tempa) that is exhibited, with inserts of Javanese statues. Javanese culture has also been inseparable from the fragrance of atsiri. In addition to cultural elements, two-dimensional paintings and digital touches on the arrangement of objects that at first glance resemble postcards ,” said Nunik. (LS/IM)
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