Mella Jaarsma

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Mella Jaarsma

Blanket Talks – Series 2, 2024

Installation with cotton fabric, embroidered emblems, re-used teak woodblocks, video, and performance

Commissioned in 2024 by Lahore Biennale Foundation

 

For Blanket Talks – Series 2, a mixed-media installation and performance that continues from a project first realized in Bandung earlier this year, Mella Jaarsma created 8 different woodblock stamps, with designs based on satellite images of eight deforestation hotspots in Indonesia, ranging from mine sites to plantations and agriculture areas to Nusantara, the new capital carved from Borneo’s jungles. Working with an artisan in Lahore, Jaarsma stamped these woodblock prints onto different local fabrics. Like footprints that indicate carbon output, these woodblock marks become tangible traces recording human activities, light or heavy, positive or negative, recent or historic. Woven into a patchwork, these prints are transformed into costumes and floor blankets that make space for an unfolding conversation around land use and agriculture.

 

During the opening of LB03, Jaarsma invited Fouad Bajwa, of Agriculture Republic, and Saniya Ali Wattoo, Agricultural Research Associate at Rizq, to activate the Lahore edition of Blanket Talks by talking about their personal relationships to food, their experiences with local people and ecologies, and the policies and initiatives needed to sustain agricultural practices in Pakistan.

 

Mella Jaarsma (b. 1960, Emmeloord) moved to Indonesia after studying at the Minerva Academy in Groningen (1978-1984).  In 1988, she and Nindityo Adipurnomo established Cemeti Art House, one of the earliest and longest-running spaces for contemporary art in Yogyakarta. Jaarsma is known for her complex costume installations and her focus on forms of cultural and racial diversity embedded within clothing, the body, and food.  Her work has been shown at MOCA Taipei (2007), ARTER, Istanbul (2014), Setouchi Triennale (2019), and Biennale Videobrasil (2023).

 

Woodblock printing by Usman Akbar, Shoaib Sarwar, and Rashid at Liberty Market Lahore.