Ika Vantiani graduated from Advertising major at di London Institute of Communication Jakarta. With her background in communication industry, she became self-learning artist, working with objects in her surrounding. She is interested to discuss subjects of women, mass media, consumption and art in general. Ika has been participated in many exhibitions such as Titik Temu, National Gallery, Jakarta (2018), Breathing on Paper, Art 1 Gallery, Chiang Mai, Thailand (2017), OK Video 2015, National Gallery, Jakarta (2015), dan 1 x 25 Jam, Cemeti Art House Yogyakarta (2014). Now aside of being artist and craftwoman, she is also art curator and organizer.
Ika brings out a project she has been working on for the last few years, namely Kata untuk Perempuan. The project was initiated by a workshop on collage conducted by Ika in October 2015. In the workshop, the participants were requested to answer a question, “for you, what is one word that represents woman?” The question was triggered by Ika’s awareness as a woman that there are lots of words used in our daily conversation to describe woman, but only a few of them can sufficiently represent the state of being woman. So, what do other females think? What do men think? What words do they choose?
And there the journey started. Ika went around cities and places, visited communities and institutions in Indonesia, encouraging the public to answer that particular question. Later, she illustrated the responses in manual collages posted on Instagram @katauntukperempuan. By launching this project, Ika aims to stimulate us to re-examine how women are represented in the language we use in our daily conversation.
Photo source: greatmind.id
