The second presentation in the serie of exhibitions -curated by Alia Swastika for BIASA Art- of Women, Power and Tradition focuses on the juxtaposition of science and tradition particularly regarding the role of women in cycle of life. Both selected artists, Salima Hakim and Mutia Bunga, have been investigating the shiftings and the permutations of human life beyond anthropocene and offering the women’s perspective that is often missing in our mainstream narrative.

Salima Hakim recreates in such interesting method the mainstream and given imagination of human evolution that is usually represented by figure of male, and transform them into image of female apes that would be leading to female body. With her wide range research and investigation, she found literature that confirms the finding of female fossil across territory in Oceania, and from here she “drew” and designed a fictional journal that emphasizes the representation of women’s body in this fundamental human (his/her) story. In some of the new series shepresents, Bunga started to observe the notion of cyborg, and how the technology
will interfere with state of human being and even with physical forms. She imagined a post-human speculation of body as tools and chips, of knowledge as way of living.

Penumbra is an outer and lighter shadow, cast by a celestial body, where the light from the Sun is partially blocked during the solar eclipse. We use the term to think about futuristic speculation of human history, that offers light within the darkness, as the hope of humanity.

writer: Alia Swastika