The Indonesian artist transforms The Curve in her first solo UK exhibition.
In January 2025, Indonesian artist Citra Sasmita will transform The Curve for her first solo exhibition in the UK: a new commission titled Into Eternal Land. Working fluidly across painting, sculptural installation, embroidery and scent, Sasmita will invite visitors on a symbolic, multi-sensory journey through the 90-metre-long gallery to explore ideas of ancestral memory, ritual and migration.
An interdisciplinary artist, Sasmita’s practice challenges fixed ideas in relation to gender roles, hierarchies of power, systems of oppression, and more. Into Eternal Land speaks to universal and urgent concerns: connecting with ancestral traditions, grappling with the power and precarity of the natural world, and proposing the possibility of feminist resistance.
Sasmita’s practice often engages with the Indonesian Kamasan painting technique. Dating from the fifteenth century, and traditionally practiced exclusively by men, Kamasan was used to narrate Hindu epics. Reclaiming this masculine practice, Sasmita is interested in dismantling misconceptions of Balinese culture and confronting its violent colonial past. Challenging gender hierarchies and reinventing mythologies, her protagonists are powerful women who populate a post-patriarchal world.
For her Barbican commission Into Eternal Land, the artist draws inspiration from a rich range of sources. These include centuries-long histories of displacement and migration across the Indonesian archipelago, as well as the symbolism of heaven, earth and hell across cultures – from the story of Bhima Swarga crossing hell to save his parents, as recounted in the Balinese epic Mahabharata, to Dante’s Inferno and beyond.
Citra Sasmita is a self-taught artist; she studied literature and physics, then worked as a short story illustrator for the Bali Post before she began developing her expanded artistic practice.
This exhibition was made possible thanks to Lead Support from the Bagri Foundation, additional support from the MENAEA Collection, Kuala Lumpur, the Henry Moore Foundation, and Natasha Sidharta, as well as a residency in partnership with Delfina Foundation.
EVENTS
Into Eternal Land: Artist Talk with Citra Sasmita : Tuesday 4 Feb 2025, 7pm, The Curve
Pather Panchali (U) Citra Sasmita: Into Eternal Land Monday 10 Feb 2025, 6.15pm
Barbican Young Poets x Citra Sasmita : Wednesday 9 April 2025, 7pm, The Curve
Listings
Citra Sasmita: Into Eternal Land: Thu 30 Jan—Sun 20 Apr 2025
The Curve Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London, EC2Y 8DS
Admission FREE
The Curve is open 11am - 7pm
Further Information: Citra Sasmita: Into Eternal Land | Barbican