Cinerama: Art and the Moving Image Exhibited in Singapore Art Museum. The two Indonesian artists, oomleo and Tromorama, presented two distinct works for the exhibition.
Singapore Art Museum opened its doors for their latest exhibition, Cinerama: Art and the Moving Image in Southeast Asia, an immersive experience for films, art, and installations. The exhibition focuses on moving images and tied the concept to various political and social identities, ones that influences the artists. Cinerama presents the works of 10 contemporary artists and collectives from South East Asia, with two of being Indonesian residents. Works exhibited features various mediums of artistic works including films, animation, references to pop culture, and personal contemplation to moving image. The two Indonesian artists in the exhibition, Narpati Awangga, also known as oomleo and Indonesian artist collective, Tromorama present two distinct works that focuses on creativity and production of animated videos.
Sarah Choo Jing, Wear You All Night (installation view), 2017. Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum.
Narpati Awangga, also known as oomleo presented the work called Maze Out, where he was inspired by his love for games. The work is a pixel-art video with characters reminiscent of the 1980s arcade games. oomleo portrays the contemporary Indonesian way of life, predominantly through the hubbub city life filled with congested roads, joggers, and other elements of the metropolis. “I try to remove all the elements that seem pessimistic in my work. I want it to be fun, interactive, and engaging. The audience has to have an urgency of leaving the stressful life through my work, that’s where the reward is.” oomleo has been involved in several art workshops and programs other than Singapore and has interests in sharing his knowledge and skills to those around him. “I always try to get the audience’s attention and engagement through my work. I think it’s empowering to be able to engage in an artistic dialogue with the audience and work towards supporting one another, as an artist with the audience.”
While artistic collective Tromorama featured a work entitled Zsa Zsa Zsu, a music video for a Bandung-based music band, Rock N’ Roll Mafia (RNRM). Described as “exhausting, ridiculous, and traumatic, the music video is a low-tech stop motion video that utilizes everyday objects of buttons and beads. Tromorama shared to us about their inspirations, as the collective strongly believed that they “could not make a strong separation between [their] interest in animation and the object itself. We realized that as humans, we share similar characters with the objects and materials we utilize everyday. And so that was where the idea of the stop-motion video came from; that we want to accommodate our perspective about the daily life to our work.” The collective shared how each exhibition was unique and the international experience has really moved and influenced their artistic practices. “[Every exhibitions] are always different from one to the other and we encounter various interpretation or reading in our works, so there’s always something new to look forward to each time.” The animation is a contrast to the high-tech, modern, and innovative culture we engross ourselves in. While mainstream music videos are composed and produced at a high cost, Tromorama’s Zsa Zsa Zsu shows a different side of video-making, one that is intimate, budget-friendly, and nostalgic of the less digital era.
Goers to Cinerama: Art and the Moving Image could also immerse in other interactive works created by artists from Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, USA, Vietnam and the Philippines. The exhibition is on view from November 17, 2017 until March 18, 2018 at Singapore Art Museum at 8Q.