Valentine Willie Fine Art Kuala Lumpur is proud to present a solo exhibition by Cinanti Astria Johansjah, a.k.a Keni, a Bandung-based artist whose works have been known for her idiosyncratic approach toward narratives and fantasy. Graduating from the Faculty of Art and Design, Bandung Institute of Technology in 2008, Keni has mostly worked with watercolor, a medium the artist considers most appropriate to express her fluid and free imagination. Mamihlapinatapai, however, marks Keni’s recent milestone, which features her first-time exploration of three-dimensional objects using ready-made glass jars and sculpted resin.

To date, Keni’s practice has dealt with the artist’s obsession towards the depiction of animals presented as both allegory and reverie. Keni’s commentary often reflects upon the ‘animality’ in the human character. In our anthropocentric world, animals are regularly seen as ‘the other’, a living creature distinguished from human beings in the history of civilization. In many different formal languages, the notion of the ‘animal’ is identified with ‘the uncivilized’ or ‘the wild’. In response to this, works in the exhibition portray animals and the artist’s mimicry of animals to invert and question the superiority of human world.

However, the animal characters in Keni’s visual vocabulary also refer to the artist’s imaginary friends. Keni mixes and juxtaposes the human and animal world through playful narration; here, she combines and mixes symbols, icons and locations, unhindered by the need for meaning. At its most personal level, the artist believes that her works are simply an expression of particular moments from life, namely where her daydreams and thoughts transforms every single breath into a more meaningful consciousness.

Most of Keni’s works in the exhibition simply departs from her question on the polarity between reality and imagination. The title of this exhibition, Mamihlapinatapai, is taken from a word in the Yaghan language of Tierra del Fuego (South America), which has been listed as the most succinct word in the human history. It originally means “a look shared by two people, each wishing that the other would initiate something that they both desire but which neither wants to [initiate].” The fact that the word has been considered as one of the most difficult words to translate is used as a hint at the problems of understanding fantasies in contemporary art practice, and its corollaries.

Agung Hujatnikajennong