Samsara, alias Sammy or Susuubi, is an Indonesian-born artist living and studying in Maastricht. She is studying Interdisciplinary Arts and practices art through risograph printmaking, performance, dinners, and poetry. In her interview, Samsara communicates how her personal, ethnic, and national background had influenced both her art practice and political engagement. Growing up in Indonesia, a country that is still recovering from the colonial occupation under Dutch rule, has significantly affected Samsara in the way she understands how knowledge is perceived and shared, and how that plays a big role in how her culture has been preserved. Particularly towards her perspective on the queer nature of her country which she wishes to reclaim and carry on along her artistic and activist development. Having a particular interest in education, she aims to decolonize education and enhance traditional forms of knowledge production which differs from the Western knowledge that has been imposed globally for centuries. For instance, one of her methods of knowledge production is through dinners, which she cooks and hosts, and through which she researches embodied and affective knowledge as well as mnemonic practice to pass memory. She serves dinner as a medium for teaching, the survival skill of not only cooking but also loving and caring for your community.
Moreover, she aims to empower her audience, as a queer South-East Asian person, by sharing messages of self-acceptance, self-love, and appreciation through her art creating a safe space for people to exist and communicate. Existing as a queer person in Indonesia remains a struggle, almost a threat, for most people hence the will of Samsara to support her Indonesian and South-East Asian audience in general. Indeed as shown in her visual gallery, the illustrations of Samsara portray positive slogans in colorful and bright shapes, gathering both her artistic identity and political engagements together.
The tree code made out of the interview statements shows an overview of the components mentioned by Samsara and how they relate together. After the categorization of the codes and the identification of the themes, the statements were shaped into a coherent story-telling summarising the interview.
In that respect, Samsara starts by introducing herself mentioning two specific aspects of her identity that have a significant relevance in her art and activism; her queerness and her Indonesian culture. Additionally, she presents her artistic practice as mentioned here-above.
Samsara also mentions a few times how the colonial background of Indonesia has shaped her identity and how it serves as a motivation to create. She explains how she has been conditioned by Western standards and how she felt a loss of autonomy in daily life but particularly in her academic education. This process of losing her authenticity and free will in a sense, constitutes the cause of her current identity which will result in consequences as elaborated thereafter.
Indeed it seems like the remnants of colonization in Indonesia, which holds on to Samsara’s identity, pushes her into a process of action for decolonization, on behalf of herself as well as her country in general. As she mentions, she has high ambition in education and particularly how to decolonize academic institutions for the benefit of non-Western methods of knowledge production. Therefore, as the colonial background of her home country constituted the causes of her identity, her process of decolonization is the consequence, of her trauma response to colonization as defined in her own words. By decolonizing knowledge, she means rediscovering different and traditional values of knowledge, far from the nowadays imposed Western standards, and highlighting indigenous knowledge which would give opportunities for Indonesians to reclaim their lost independence.
Within her process of decolonization occurs her artistic activism. Although Samsara says she has little knowledge about the Artistic Activism concept itself, she considers herself an activist and translates it through her art for its ability to bring about social change. She also mentioned that her queerness and decoloniality are the components of her activism. These two same components are also the two major stimuli portrayed in her art.
Samsara also explained an interesting point about art and political engagement. She indicated that the aim of art always has a purpose for the statement, whether political or not, and that even not having a message to communicate is itself a statement. It questions artistic activism as being more than a concept but maybe an obviousness as all kinds of arts could therefore be activist to some extent.
In addition, when the concept of artistic activism has been brought about for the first time during the interview, Samsara originally assert that she did not consider herself an activist because of the conventional definition she had of it. Although the more she elaborated on her motivations the more she would realize that she can legitimately consider herself an activist. This point brings us back to the literature review explored at the beginning of this research, which outlines how youth populations have a narrower definition of what political participation is and consequently do not consider themselves as activist, or politically engaged, while their actions would show the contrary. Samsara stated that she was not considering herself an activist in the sense that she does not go to the streets with banners showing publicly her discontent, which is what she considers conventional activism. While when examining her artistic practice, her motivations, and what she aims to share in doing so, it can be claimed that she is doing artistic activism, even if unconsciously.
In conclusion, Samsara is an artist as well as an activist and her practice of both activities is genuinely reliant and interlinked. Although she would not consider herself an activist in the first place, her stance changed as she was talking about it. She properly highlights the issue of understanding regarding concepts like political participation or engagement, as well as activism, among youth populations as their practice is mostly unconventional, non-traditional, or non-institutionalized. Samsara also pointed out the power that artistic activism can hold as it brings together two practices with a myriad of possibilities to convey a message. She additionally acknowledged that art has always something to do with activism or engagement as it always aims to transmit something, and even if it does not it is itself a statement thus a stance.
Few days after the interview, Samsara invited me for a dinner at her place in order to show me in practice her art through cooking and hosting dinner.
She prepared a salad of raw bok choi accompanied by kip seasoned with lemongrass, galangal, garlic, ginger, cumin, salt, chili and bouillon. With rice and sambel matah which is a raw chili sauce originally from Bali.
Sammy explained how in her culture, feeding her loved ones is a great symbol of care. For that reason, she carefully adjusted the level of spice in a way that I could enjoy the meal. Because it is important to her that people can eat and enjoy any food she will prepare.
