30 June 2004

What: Exhibition using a video installation performance

When: Opening Wednesday 7 July from 6pm. Runs until 9 July

Where: Building 12, Casuarina Campus, Charles Darwin University

Through the Kebaya is a multi media exhibition representing the culmination of a cross cultural Master of Visual Arts project undertaken by Charles Darwin University student Victoria Cattoni.

Victoria Cattoni with works from her exhibition - image by Baz Ledwidge

“The project is concerned with reading the kebaya – a very feminine and traditional blouse for women in Indonesia. The kebaya operates as a ‘doorway’ for an exploration into constructions of cultural identity, in particular in relation to the ‘feminine’,” said Ms Cattoni.

“Through the Kebaya includes a range of video works which have resulted from a number of interactive workshops in Jakarta, Bandung (West Java), Semarang (Centra Java), Bali and Darwin. The actual kebayas used in the workshops will be presented within the installation”.

The project has been underway for more than two years in a number of different geographic locations and cultural contexts within Indonesia – where Ms Cattoni lived for a number of years - and Darwin. The exhibition will be opened by visiting Indonesian new media artist and writer, Krisna Murti

“Many performers are quite familiar and comfortable with the garment while others display their distance and curiosity to it. We witness a process of self-recognition, reflection, criticism and re-construction as individuals reveal the multiple meanings and nuances that lie beneath the kebaya.”

The kebaya has multiple forms and functions and personifies an ideal of ‘femininity’ within Indonesian consciousness. The kebaya is part of the national costume for women in Indonesia and functions as formal dress in many regions of Indonesia and is daily dress for many of the elderly rural and urban poor especially in Java.

In Bali, where it is perhaps most visible and embraced, it is the ceremonial blouse for women. Women of all ages wear the kebaya for religious occasions and ceremonies even in its highly transparent, body-hugging form that outlines the body in a way that challenges definitions of propriety of other cultural groups within Indonesia and abroad.

“My work creates a forum where different cultural definitions of ‘femininity’ might be considered together. Not so in order to highlight difference, but rather to bring others into our own spaces and to challenge our perceptions of difference, cultural and other,” Ms Cattoni explained.

“It challenges us to look beyond our own cultural boundaries and engage with the individuals performing. It invites the viewer to enter into a more personal dialogue that moves definitively away from the ongoing ‘exotic’ representations of Bali, and the highly politicised readings of ‘Indonesia’.