Gajah Gallery Yogyakarta presents Kebebasan Manusia Perasa (Freedom of the Sentient Beings), a three-person exhibition featuring Sriyani, Siti Ruliyati, and Kustiyah—three women artists whose practices illuminate the delicate threshold between feeling and form, intimacy and distance, life and object.
Curated by Hyphen-—the collective of Akmalia Rizqita “Chita”, Grace Samboh, and Ratna Mufida—the exhibition explores how art can embody the sentient pulse of everyday life: how a line, a gaze, or a gesture becomes a vessel for emotion, knowledge, and lived experience.
Through Sriyani’s monotype prints, black becomes a breathing space—alive with tenderness. Each succinct line constructs figures that are awkward yet intimate, still yet pulsating, reflecting a quiet familiarity with life’s fragility. In contrast, Siti Ruliyati’s drawings dance with restlessness: her lines quiver and tremble across markets, rice fields, and gatherings, portraying people not as subjects of beauty, but as beings caught in motion—alive within the pulse of their communities. Meanwhile, Kustiyah—one of Indonesia’s pioneering female modern painters—glided her brush with joy and spryness, rendering self-portraits, flowers, and household objects with lucid sincerity. Her freedom lay not in grand gestures but in the independence of shaping her own rhythms of labour and life.
By placing these three artists in dialogue, Freedom of the Sentient Beings reveals how portraiture and representation in Indonesia have always been intertwined with the ethics of living and feeling. The exhibition also draws on the writings of figures such as Oei Sian Yok and Marianne Katoppo, re-reading their humanist ideas of freedom and compassion as active, creative forces. Here, freedom is not about transcendence but attunement—the ability to sense, to listen, to be moved, and to respond.
Amid a world that glorifies speed and perfection, Freedom of the Sentient Beings invites visitors to pause and dwell in gentleness. In the searching of a line, in colours waiting to dry, and in the patient rhythm of hands, we find that freedom is not distant—it is handmade, alive, and deeply felt.
Join us for the opening reception on 9 October at Gajah Gallery Yogyakarta. The exhibition runs until 14 November 2025.
