Aziz Amri

Performing the personal and the political 
By Ho See Wah

Aziz Amri, ‘Jardin Zoologique D'Acclimatation’, 2018, mixed media installation and performance. Image courtesy of the artist.

Interpreting power structures through the viscerality of performance steers Jakarta-based Aziz Amri’s (b. 1994) practice. While the artist works across a range of media including illustration and photography, his live pieces hold a prominent spot in his oeuvre. His fondness for this medium can be further discerned from the artist-run space that Aziz co-founded, Sepersepuluh, where performance art is its main focus. 

Aziz Amri, ‘Laurel Wreath: Evolution’, 2018, performance, 45 min. Photograph by Kelvin Atmadibrata, image courtesy of the artist.

It is at Sepersepuluh where Aziz held his first two solo exhibitions, ‘Hyaline’ (2017) and ‘Laurel Wreath’ (2018). Outside of this space, he has also participated in numerous exhibitions and festivals both within Indonesia and abroad, including the solo ‘Black Magic’ (2019) at Giant Dwarf, Manila, Melaka Art and Performance Festival 2017, and Bandung International Art Festival 2019. 

The artist’s interest in decoding power structures stems from making sense of his personal experiences and encounters, which he extrapolates to pervasive social issues. For his performance, ‘They Say Things’ where he crams translucent straws into his mouth to the point of choking, Aziz demonstrates the psychological repercussions of rigidly following the status quo in spite of one’s deviating inclinations. And as with this genre of art where the object is just as agential as the body, the straws function goes beyond that of a mere prop. Rather, they partake in the meaning-making process as an aggressive force bearing down on the artist’s body. At the same time, their translucency alludes to the “invisible” factor of such forces in society. While inspired by his own conventional upbringing, the artist also views this as a widespread phenomenon where normative expectations insidiously suffocate personal choices. 

Aziz Amri, ‘Neuron’, 2019, performance. Image courtesy of the artist.

For Aziz, the preparation forms an important foundation for his performance, and much care and effort goes into conducting research before its eventual execution. His upcoming work on food in relation to the senses and memory saw him staying in multiple villages for months on end so as to thoroughly understand the various facets of his subject matter. Behind this level of commitment to his craft is a resolute belief of the universality of art, and its capacity to drive social change.

Click here to read our conversation with Aziz Amri, where he speaks about Sepersepuluh, his intimate relationship with art, and how his upcoming work landed him on Masterchef Indonesia.