( ) in the Mountain is an artist collective consisting of a group of friends who graduated from Dutch art academies. While facing the reality of our precarious  situations as international emerging artists, they were brought up out of a need for a space that allowed for growth. Our place welcomes what is often omitted, hidden, or swiped away, giving ourselves and others a space for the quiet, for all that often does not make its way to the forefront, as well as an attempt to bring our art practices closer to our daily lives. We were established in August 2022, and are currently based at De Besturing, an artist studio complex in the Hague, the Netherlands.

         

I was born and raised in the bustling city of Jakarta, Indonesia.

I have a particular memory that I would like to share: When I was about 4 or 5 years old, I would visit my grandparents house on the weekends. Not far from where they lived, there was a strange abandoned soccer field. It is dry and barren, but they had horses there. I would go horseback riding every week with Horse number 10. There were other horses too, but I was drawn to Horse number 10’s deep burnt umber coat. As time passes, I would eventually stop going to that field altogether. 2 years ago, I finally returned to visit my hometown since I left for The Netherlands. I soon discovered that the once abandoned field is now closed off and has been purchased by a developer. They plan to build a high-rise apartment there. Every now and then, I think of what happened to the horses and how they got there to begin with.

It is these memories, vivid or distant, happenings, and occurrences that fuels my work. In my practice, I try to create a space and place for myself to exist solemnly in this world. As a postcolonial body, my works are concerned with embodied experiences of longing, yearning, and attempts to materialize, or make tangible for myself, ancestral stories and world building as possible ways of and navigating oneself.

To Dwell These Horses (They have always been there) is a collection of objects and drawings that work together to form an idealised dwelling space, a safe space that I constructed for myself in the reality of the space that I occupy in the context of a Western art academy. It is a place where earth beings, humans and non humans live side by side, where we are perceptive to our surroundings, and where objects appear distant and unfamiliar, yet recognisable– they become characters in this animated world.