Nindityo Adipurnomo and Mella Jaarsma

The married couple Nindityo Adipurnomo and Mella Jaarsma work each in their own way as artists with cultural traditions, rituals and social structures. Adipurnomo’s sculptures use the konde, the typical Javanese hair knot, to give a new direction to subjects relating to national and personal identity. Jaarsma constructs sculptural costumes with animal materials which make the wearer a dramatic but richly laden social and cultural stranger. At the invitation of Sonsbeek 2008 they are working for the first time together as artists.

Jaarsma and Adipurnomo have erected nine small temples in a special spot in Sonsbeek Park enclosed by young trees. The temples are of different formats and forms that are reminiscent of Javanese and Balinese architecture but also of parts of the body. Very special materials have been used to make them, such as caterpillar cocoons, human hair and buffalo horn.

The temples contain shrines with small everyday objects such as a mortar or a sarong. These come from migrant families living in Arnhem, for whom they are living objects filled with memories and feelings. Sometimes supernatural powers are attributed to them. Written on a glass wall in the little temples is the story told about the object by the family. For Adipurnomo and Jaarsma, these fetishes serve as a model for the belief to be found in many cultures that objects can be the link between the ordinary and the sublime, the human and the divine.

The temples with their objects were carried during the Procession by the Guild of Many Cultures.