Sri Astari Rasjid'€™s ongoing retrospective exhibition in Yogyakarta signifies an important direction in Indonesian contemporary art and beyond, making it clear how art inspired by culture and tradition can break through established dynamics without losing its essential values.

For almost three decades, artist Sri Astari Rasjid, known as Astari to her friends, has relentlessly and continuously sought to reread and reinterpret the layers of meaning in the Javanese culture into which she was born, looking at it with a personal vision imbued with the ever-evolving spirit of the time.

The retrospective, '€˜'€˜Yang Terhormat Ibu'€™'€™ (Dear Mother), which opened on Saturday at Gadjah Mada University'€™s Koesnadi Hardjosoemantri Cultural Center in Yogyakarta and runs until March 5, displays selected works from 1998-2016.

The exhibition shows her evolving path in the arts coinciding with her personal '€œbecoming'€ '€” a term coined in the theory of American psychologist Gordon Allport which denotes that a person evolves or '€œbecomes'€ after gaining new knowledge and experience.

'€˜'€˜Yang Terhormat Ibu'€™'€™ is Astari'€™s homage to her late mother, who was a dominating influence in her life. It is at the same time a tribute to the entire spectrum of women, including the mythical goddess that emulates the feminine power which Astari believes dwells in every person: '€œIt must be activated if the world is to be saved'€.

The 2.5-meter high kebaya (traditional blouse) sculpture, titled Armor for Change, with its simple lines and without the usual body-beautifying attributes, radiates a spirit of liberation. The only embellishment, in the form of a huge brooch shaped as a butterfly, denotes change.

Entering the ultra-modern and stirring womblike '€œhole'€ produced by Heri Pemad art management as an introduction to Astari'€™s works is like entering a timeless space of an unknown imaginative interior leading up to the photograph of Bajang Ratu, the Majapahit Gate whose shape is like the female genitalia, which Astari considers the entrance to the womb that gives birth to humanity in its entirety.

Photography is indeed a relatively new medium that Astari applies to promulgate her vision of the feminine energy that she believes is symbolic of the goddess sustaining life on earth and the entire universe.

The medium was revealed on the opening night of the exhibition when Astari'€™s latest work, the Bedhaya dance, was performed by seven female dancers from Surakarta, Central Java, in the Pendapa or Joglo hall that was part of the Indonesia Pavilion at the 55th prestigious Venice Biennale.

As she conceived and gave form to a transformed sacred dance, she cooperated with the young Enno Sulystiorini from Surakarta on choreography denoting the tension between the feminine and masculine forces, with animated and flowing movements, swaying kris daggers and masks revealing the good and evil but ultimately ending in a balance of power.

A surprising further highlight was the tembang, when she chanted in Javanese, standing on the suggested Merapi Mountain that was erupting on a projection of video mapping.

Feminine power: Artist Sri Astari Rasjid chants in Javanese, standing inside the suggested Mount Merapi erupting on a video mapping projection.

In her new works, Astari revisits the feminine power, including a bronze sculpture of the revered goddess Dewi Sri and two mixed media paintings featuring hairstyles hovering over beautiful landscapes, but also scorched land indicating the female energy as a surreal force to handle realities on the ground.

And to add memory and history, images of Javanese comics are embedded in the aluminum framing the paintings. A Seat for Change featuring a chair with its back carved in the shape of a vagina comes with two little bags denoting change and growth.

The French-born, Bali residing art critic Jean Couteau once said that while some critics saw Astari'€™s works as feminist tracts, there was in fact an underlying deeper meaning to her works. '€œAt the same time she denounces male oppression of women, she actually denounces the hidden, economic-based symbolic manipulation that constantly bears down on all our freedom.'€

Branded items like Kelly bags are an indispensable attribute of women who like to be seen in society, and have become the jimat (traditional amulet) of modern women, whose fear of social denouncement has erupted in large-scale consumerism.

A gigantic installation of a Kelly bag set in a garden and surrounded by an arrangement of porcelain platters forming the garba is presented as a house of consumption that caters to earthly desires.

Of her older works, the installation Abandoning Virility (2002) is a stunning expression of Astari'€™s reflections on a woman'€™s life and death and the fallacy of make-believe.

The piece '€” featuring a Kebaya Kartini made of stainless steel and embellishments consisting of body parts and female toiletries against a background of Javanese scripture and the shape of a red vagina extending from the top and the bottom of the kebaya '€” was her second large kebaya sculpture after Prettified Cage in 1998.

In 2011 the kebaya appeared in a five-fold themed as Armors for the Soul (2011), which she denotes as shields for the soul against worldly temptations, while the giant second-edition kebaya featured in front of the exhibition'€™s venue '€” the first edition of which stands outside Fullerton Bay Hotel in Singapore '€” was created as part of the ENVISION exhibition of Asian and Southeast Asian sculptures in the garden city.

Astari'€™s retrospective is replete with the significance of feminine energy, also denoted as sakti (powerful), and coming at the time of her imminent departure as Ambassador to Bulgaria, Albania and Macedonia, it may well signal the direction of her diplomatic practice.

'€” Photos Courtesy of Sri Astari Rasjid