HOME

A series of paintings depicting the collage of memories and Yuliana's relationship with 'Home' after two years  pandemic lockdowns.

"As I began writing this piece in my backyard looking over the Grevilleas and Bottle Brushes blossoming surrounding pink and purple Bougainvilleas, Bamboos plants leaning along the neighbour's fence and Bird of Paradise showing off their orange and yellow flowers, I was thinking that is my life, I am home.

Crawling through my past in my childhood in the tropical weather country, all the childhood memories often come back to me. But after more than two decades living happily in Australia I don’t see the difference now. I am home. 

Home away from home. Like most Australian, I have spent much of my life in the suburbs, and I am no different, a  human facing and surviving life. 

What is my relationship with home? The concept 'I am home', is now more real. It’s been two years living with the pandemic, we mostly stay home than connect with people outside the house. Home has become our comfort place, our hiding place, our safe place. 

In the meantime I continue searching for my relationship to the past, relationship amongst people and things, and the dynamic circumstances of the present."

Yuliana Kusumastuti

Brisbane, October 2021

instagram: @yuliana_kusumastuti

Yuliana's experience in the arts stretches from writing about arts and culture as a young journalist in Indonesia, to  curating and organising art exhibitions. She moved to Australia 20 years ago and completed her MA at Charles Darwin University, Darwin, Australia. 

Today she continues to write on 'Art and Culture' for various Australian and Indonesian media outlets. Yuliana's art practice draws on her cultural background and identity as an Indonesian living in Australia, two places she calls home. She develops her work through mark making and layering, highlighting her growth in life through burden and survival as a woman and a mother in society, and as an outsider to tell her own stories and stories of others. 

When she draws and paints, an energy flows, enabling her to go into her own secret world and without any expectations the drawing/painting of shapes becomes something unexpected yet true to herself. This spontaneous mark making allows her to play with lines, geometries and colours, sometimes the colours are bright and over-exposed and other times extremely dark. She interprets these outcomes as the contrast between the times that are euphoric/manic and the times that are depressing lows, common symptoms of life which define who we are.
Her work is mainly mixed media, where she uses fabrics, wool, found and vintage objects. She spontaneously employs these materials to express cultural, gender and identity themes. 

'Home' is Yuliana's second show at TOD. 'Displacement and Memory' was on show in November 2020. 

instagram: @yuliana_kusumastuti