Ritual Ceng Beng: Jayanto Tan
9 December 2022 - 22 January 2023
Curator:
Artist(s): Jayanto Tan
Location: The Atrium
Jayanto Tan’s ceramic offerings were originally created over conversations with family and friends during COVID-19 lockdowns. Whilst navigating personal racial attacks, gender identity, queerness, migration and familial narratives, Jayanto has translated these charged conversations into ceramic still-lives—or ‘soul foods’ as the artist describes—which are ceremonially presented within the gallery as a continuum of conversational pieces.
Through this installation, Jayanto invites audiences to share in intimate realms related to personal memories, celebrations of queer friendship, and honouring the loss of family members. The gallery is theatrically and metaphorically transformed into a temple of love, becoming a space for spiritual gathering and remembering loved ones. Inspired by Sumatran ceremony, Jayanto’s installation offers a space for ritual, mediation, healing and time alone, articulated through a contemporary arts practice.
Jayanto Tan is a visual artist who was born and raised in a small village in North Sumatra, Indonesia to a Sumatran Christian mother and Guandong, China Taoist father. As a Chinese-Indonesian immigrant artist living in Sydney, who fled poverty and political repression in search of a better life, his practice blends Eastern and Western mythologies with the reality of current events.
He draws on the identity politics of his diaspora to express personal experiences of ‘otherness’ through slow ceramics sculpture, authentic food, installation, drawing and performance. His practice shares autobiographical experiences of loss, displacement, hope and offers a sentiment of mixed spirituality and sharing to demonstrate a diverse culture bringing the timeless wisdom of meditation to a contemporary world.
The opening night will be held on Friday, 11 November, 6 - 8pm at Incinerator Gallery alongside exhibitions Sub~Lingual and Proximity of connection: past, present and I: Mita Chowdhury