Indonesian performance artist brings her maverick style to Singapore Art Week
Whether it is dancing in stilettos on blocks of melting butter or calmly shooting 800 white-feathered arrows randomly around a room, Marina Abramovic protégée Melati Suryodarmo’s surreal art commands attention
The threatening thud, thud, thud of arrows piercing the walls didn’t stop hundreds from queuing to join artist Melati Suryodarmo inside a windowless room at Singapore’s Gillman Barracks. They watched as she calmly let go a total of 800 arrows without much aiming.
The Indonesian artist was performing her work, Transaction of Hollows, at ShanghART’s Singapore gallery during Singapore Art Week at the end of January.
She is best known for her deeply personal “durational performances”. She acts out bizarre scenarios that put her through great physical discomfort or require her to repeat a simple action for an extended period of time.
In Exergie – Butter Dance (2000), she danced in stilettos on blocks of melting butter, which was both funny and excruciating as she persevered with her elegant dance despite slipping and becoming more and more undignified.
In 2012, she ground charcoal into dust for 12 continuous hours in I’m a Ghost in My Own House, a work about the desire for emancipation from rigid systems.