Financial Times | Citra Sasmita on reclaiming Bali’s art from the tourists — and the patriarchy

Charlotte Jansen, Financial Times, January 24, 2025

"As a child, artist Citra Sasmita used to watch her grandmother fastidiously fashion canang sari and daksinā, baskets made with coconut leaves, for use in rituals that are written into the rhythm of daily life in Bali. These devotional artworks, designed to hold offerings, were the beginning of Sasmita’s fascination with her island’s ancient artistic practices, which she now translates into enveloping, eclectic installations, infusing galleries with the scents, sounds, textures and tempo of Balinese life. The ambience is meditative, but her works also bristle with violence and rage, a fierce resistance to colonial and patriarchal history.

 

When we speak, a few days into the new year, Sasmita is preparing for a 10-day silent retreat in the mountains. After a nonstop run of international exhibitions, “for the first time, I feel burnt out. I need to cleanse my mind and get ready for a new start. In Bali we have lots of methods for balancing the mind and body.” When she returns, Sasmita arrives in London to install her first major UK solo exhibition, Into Eternal Land, at the Barbican’s Curve gallery. The 34-year-old is speaking to me from her studio, a traditional Indonesian pavilion rented from a Buddhist priest and priestess in Ubud, a beguiling Balinese town with terraced rice paddies carved into lush hills, and verdant panoramas of sprawling rainforest. At the end of the day, she rolls her artwork up, and the studio becomes a modest bedroom.

 

Sasmita had once planned to become a physics teacher. But, she says, “I had a different hunger — I was searching for an answer to why I was here, a woman in a patriarchal society.” She wanted to explore “the roots of traditional art in Bali, before the Dutch colonial era changed the mindset about art to something that is commercial.” The Dutch colonial administration took control of Bali in 1908, against staunch resistance, and in the 1920s enacted the Baliseering policy. Under the guise of cultural preservation, it turned the island into a “living museum”, promoting an image of Bali as an exotic travel destination. “Since then everything artists made here became a commodity for tourists,” Sasmita says."