Museum MACAN and UOB announces Theresia Agustina Sitompul as the latest UOB Museum MACAN Children’s Art Space Commission artist

[Theresia Agustina Sitompul: Kembara Biru (Traveling Blues). Image courtesy of Museum MACAN]

Jakarta, 6 April 2022 – Museum MACAN today announced the latest UOB Museum MACAN Children’s Art Space Commission, which features senior Indonesian printmaking artist Theresia Agustina Sitompul. She is well known for her exploration of printmaking, drawing, and installation, which carries highly personal ideas and observations of Indonesian society and community. UOB Indonesia is the Museum’s major education partner that aims to introduce and engage public especially children with art since 2017.

Opening on 9 April 2022, Theresia Agustina Sitompul Kembara Biru (Traveling Blues) corresponds to the shifting activities taking place in our homes, since the emergence of the pandemic. Now our homes serve as domestic spaces and also offices and schools. This multi-functionality reflects Theresia's own numerous roles: as a mother, an educator, and artist.

The exhibition is inspired by the artist's reflection on her experience staying at home during periods of quarantine, transforming kitchen tables and living rooms into playgrounds of the imagination, as children and families interact and learn in a fun environment. Using carbon paper as her main artistic material, with everyday small objects like buttons and bandages, Theresia encourages children to pause and step away from their digital screens, explore their domestic environments, and rediscover the joy in creating things using their own hands. She believes that everyone can make art from the simplest materials.

The exhibition will feature both a physical installation and activities at Museum MACAN, as well as a suite of online activities that can be explored at home and within the classroom. Visitors to the museum will encounter a huge soft sculptural installation made of a mix of light fabric materials. Taking the shape of a cloud-like form, inspired by a shirt with multiple arms and sleeves, it portrays the multiple roles and possibilities of manual creation. Visitors are able to touch and engage with the fabric installation. Within the space, there will be multiple paper clouds, a recurring theme throughout the installations, that symbolises endless imagination, happy days and well-wishes. These large cloud formations have transparent pockets, in which visitors are invited to attach the artworks created on-site and at school/home, using available paper and carbon paper materials.

Theresia Agustina Sitompul said, “Children’s imaginations are like the blue sky–they are bright, cheerful, and boundless. So why focus on the limitations when we can explore the possibilities? We have two hands that can create a million amazing things. We may be stuck in our own homes, but we can always make good art from the simplest materials. Kembara Biru (Traveling Blues) invites us to pause and take a short break from the digital screens that connect us with those afar. This project reengages us with the little things that are near and dear: our home, our hands, and our creative mind.”

Fenessa Adikoesoemo, Chairwoman of Museum MACAN Foundation, said, “Theresia Agustina Sitompul: Kembara Biru (Traveling Blues) is a meaningful project for us, because it is developed for children, families, and schools, which is aligned with Museum MACAN’s mission and vision of art education for children. The work itself is a reflection to our experience where we spend most of the time at home during these times. We invite the audience to reconnect again with each other, experiencing the present moment together by making things with our own hands. By using readily accessible materials from everyday life, we hope this work can encourage children to learn and nurture their creativity. I am grateful that UOB, as our Major Education Partner, has again been very supportive to the Museum in the development of this project. We’re excited to welcome children and their family to experience this new project, inside the museum and also through the workshops that the Education team has prepared with schools across Indonesia.”

As part of Theresia Agustina Sitompul: Kembara Biru (Traveling Blues), the exhibition has also been designed to connect students and classrooms across Indonesia. 12 schools from 10 provinces will receive materials and kits to allow them to take part in a series of online workshops. The workshops have been devised by the artist to encourage children across the country to join in. The schools can choose to send their students’ creations back to the Museum, where they will be included within the installation or encourage them to create their own mini exhibitions and presentations within their classrooms. Through this process the artist reminds us that art can be created everywhere–and the value of sharing our creative endeavours within our communities.

To encourage a groundswell of creative activity and exhibition making at home, these tutorials and workshops will be made publicly accessible on Museum MACAN’s YouTube and social media channels.

The UOB Museum MACAN Children’s Art Space commissions are initiated by Museum MACAN to support arts education in Indonesia, and are supported by UOB, the Museum MACAN’s major education partner. Working with leading artists, these specially designed and curated projects open up new ways for young minds and educators to engage with art.

Maya Rizano, Head of Strategic Communications and Brand, UOB Indonesia, said, “As Museum MACAN’s education partner, we are proud to support the latest UOB Museum MACAN Children’s Art Space Commission, Theresia Sitompul: Kembara Biru (Traveling Blues). Enriching lives and strengthening societal bonds are fundamental to our philosophy of supporting progress in the community. We believe that art brings together children and artists to explore and to create innovative art experiences that encourage self-expression and playful exchange. Children in particular will have opportunities to learn new ways of expressing their thoughts, feelings and hopes, while developing their creative senses with the usage of manual tools such as their own hands. This is part of UOB’s mission to champion Southeast Asian Art and our long-term commitment to promote social development through art, children and education. Our appreciation goes to Theresia Agustina Sitompul, who has made a creative universe for children, and to the Museum MACAN, with their innovative initiative in creating Children’s Art Space projects.”

Aaron Seeto, Director of Museum MACAN, said, “Over the last two years, we have all been swept up into the world of the digital for almost every aspect of our social life, now, even education is closely intertwined with the screen. Theresia Sitompul’s Museum MACAN Children Arts Space Commission is decidedly manual and analogue–it reminds us how the imagination can sometimes be connected to the creative use of our hands, and how our domestic spaces can be spaces to inspire creative investigation.

There are a number of exciting innovations with this edition of the Museum MACAN UOB Children’s Art Space Commission, we are working with schools across the country who will help Theresia create and complete a major installation in the museum, and through workshops, she will be helping children to create mini exhibitions within their classrooms and homes. I can’t wait to see how children will engage with this project, and how they will share their creative endeavors with their friends and communities, with many Kembara Biru (Traveling Blues) exhibitions popping up in classrooms across the country!”

Theresia Agustina Sitompul: Kembara Biru (Traveling Blues) will be open on 9 April 2022 and runs through until 30 October 2022. Together with the opening of Theresia Agustina Sitompul: Kembara Biru (Traveling Blues), children and families will be able to enjoy the installation alongside the another UOB Museum MACAN Children’s Art Space Tromarama: The Lost Jungle, which opened in December 2021. Side by side with the more analogous Kembara Biru (Travelling Blues), the immersive digital installation in The Lost Jungle will present a different experience for children and families–stimulating their creative senses in many ways. Tromarama: The Lost Jungle installation will run until 15 May 2022.

Visitors to the museum are required to observe strict protocols and precautionary measures to ensure the safety and well-being of all.

Kembara Biru (Traveling Blues) is also supported by Mowilex Indonesia as the Museum’s Official Paint Partner and Festivo as Virtual Reality Partner.