Pelayanan Membasuh

Washing Service

Six-hours in 14 days long durational participatory performance art

Cemeti Art House, Yogyakarta

December 2014- January 2015

Acknowledgement

Mella Jaarsma

Nindityo Adipurnomo

Agnesia Linda Mayasari

Washing Service was presented as a spa-like treatment accompanied with a welcoming yet persuasive gesture that invites audience to have their feet and hands washed. Almost like a purification ritual, the artist served her 50 participants one by one and proposed a question: “Have your hands and feet ever done wrong?” to ponder. She forbids any kind communication from them other than answers by blinking.

This work revisits the artist’s growing up years in an Islamic community, where according to the Qur’an, during Judgment Day, the mouths would be silenced while the feet and hands would confess their sins. She then attempts contextualize rituals and traditions she personally believed in with a greater sense of compassion and decency because after all, as an extension of the mind, the body is a tool that performs desires, subsequently records them as memories.

The work was initially performed for two weeks in Cemeti Art House and subsequently a day in National Gallery of Indonesia.