Episode 35: Arahmaiani Feisal Tuesday, July 5th, 2022
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Arahmaiani Feisal is an artist, environmental activist, poet, and writer. She has been working as a guest lecturer in Passau University – Germany for the last 8 years. Her own identity as Muslim mediates between Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, and animist beliefs. She has been working with communities dealing with environmental, social and cultural issues in Indonesia and abroad. Since 2010, she has been working with Tibetan monks in Tibet Plateau dealing with environmental issues.
One of Indonesia’s most seminal and respected contemporary artists, Arahmaiani has long been internationally recognized for her powerful and provocative commentaries on social, political, and cultural issues. Born in 1961 in Bandung, Indonesia, she established herself in the 1980s as a pioneer in the field of performance art in Southeast Asia. Her early performance work started in the public arena involving social-political issues in the early 80’s when the military regime was controlling and oppressing her country. Later she developed her approach expanding into environmental issues. The interactive tendency in her performance work evolved into a “community base” kind of performance & art projects.
Her work has grappled with contemporary politics, violence, critique of capital, the female body and in recent years, her own identity, which although Muslim, still mediates between Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, and animist beliefs. She often uses her public presence in order to attract attention to violence in general, and violence against women or female discrimination in Indonesia’s Islamic society, in particular. Since September 11, she has combined her critical attitude toward Islam with a fight against its general stigmatization. And since 2010 she has been working with Tibetan monks in Tibet Plateau dealing with environmental conflicts. She has been teaching in the Department of South East Asia, Passau University in Germany since 2012.