Spectral Fiction

After working together with Cagi for a number of exhibition projects, including Rumah Prahara (100 Years of Tempest, 2012) and Numbers (for Not a Dead End, Jogja Biennale 2013), I understand Spectral Fiction as a project that emphasizes Cagi’s artistic temperament that, although full of leaps, truly accentuates a deep interest in issues of perception and consciousness. We enjoy light and color like the air we breath—oftentimes we are not aware that we are doing it. Light and color must be reissued in novel ways, especially when we can only memorize the names of colors, and become burdened by its literality. Spectral Fiction may also be positioned as a project that responded to a proclivity for the chromophobia—an excessive fear of the use of color—that may be pushed by certain reluctance to return to an art that is more formalistic-abstract-modernistic. Cagi believes that color remains a mystery to people. But at the same time it does not act as a haunting ghost that may possesses into art to become a form of artificial practice. Although it is oftentimes demoted as cosmetics, decorations, and mere ornamentation, color remains a color, which truly has no name.

Born 1979, Bandung, Indonesia
Lives and works in Bandung, Indonesia

Syagini Ratna Wulan a.k.a Cagi is an artist based in Bandung, Indonesia who received a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts from the Faculty of Art and Design from the Bandung Institute of Technology (2001) and a Master’s Degree in Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths College, University of London (2005). She works with a non-linear visual approach throughout her career as an artist and moves around many different mediums and methodologies of presenting her ideas. More recently, she has been focusing on interplays of light, color, and perception.

Syagini has been involved in numerous exhibitions domestically and abroad, such as the recent Asia Pacific Triennale 10 (2021), QAGOMA, Brisbane, Australia both as part of the group exhibition and APT10 Kids at the Children's Art Centre; Felix Art Fair (2020) in Los Angeles, USA; Art Jakarta (2019) with ROH Projects, Jakarta, Indonesia; ARTJOG 10: Changing Perspective (2017) in Yogyakarta, Indonesia; Art Stage Singapore (2017), as well as recent solo exhibitions Susurrus (2019), Spectral Fiction (2016) at ROH Projects, at Jakarta and ahead-of-itself-already-being-in (2017) at FOST Gallery, Singapore. She has also presented a solo project titled BIBLIOTEA at the 2011 edition of ArtHK, Hong Kong. That same year, she was invited for a residency at Art Initiative Tokyo. Her works are held in public collections in Singapore Art Museum, Obayashi Private Museum, Japan, and Indonesian Exchange.

Artist