This place is mine, three sculptures, one video, 2006

Mella Jaarsma is a Dutch artist based in Indonesia, whose work deals with ideas surrounding camouflage and identity. In the 1990’s she created costumes resembling animal skins that art audiences could handle and wear. For the Liberation chapter, Mella Jaarsma will exhibit a new work entitled This place is mine, based on her experience of the recent Yogyakarta earthquake. It will consist of assembled garments, sculpture, photographs and video. Three costumes, resembling shelters and tents will be placed on piles of earthquake rubble in particular spots where a household once was. These charged ‘flexible housing’ sites are documented in photographs.

For the exhibition in Saigon, Jaarsma will extend the project by placing the ‘flexible houses’ in front of places that have been rebuilt after the war, and then film them on video. By incorporating the debris of a past catastrophe, Jaarsma’s work asks how, with everything destroyed, can we rebuild our existence? Do we want to replace the old, or do we have the ability to improve?

Jaarsma currently lives and works in Yogyakarta, where she is co-director of Cemeti Art foundation, a gallery and foundation supporting young Indonesian artists. (GG)