Siasat Air
Departing from the Citarum River as both an ecological landscape and a site of industrial accumulation, this body of work views the river not merely as a flow of water, but as a body that stores traces of production, consumption, residue, and shifting identities. Amid ongoing industrial pressure, the river is understood as a space forced to endure continuously—bearing sediment, absorbing toxins, and continuing to flow while gradually losing its ability to fully recover.
The series OOTD — Outfit of the Deposits, consisting of garments layered with water hyacinth fibers, reflects the “dirtiness” of the fashion industry that contaminates river water while simultaneously triggering the growth of invasive plants. Water hyacinth proliferates alongside increasing pollution in the river; it absorbs and stores various residues while covering the water’s surface and slowly transforming the life beneath it. Its ability to survive amid contamination reveals a paradoxical form of resilience: surviving—and also invading—precisely through the accumulation of waste and damage itself.
Through cyanotype, Citarum Specimen I uses water hyacinth paper and river water directly in its creation process, allowing the contaminants and chemical condition of the river water to become part of the image formation itself. Cyanotype’s sensitivity to pH levels and foreign substances produces results that cannot be entirely predicted. Referring to the original function of cyanotype, once used to record botanical specimens, the work instead presents specimens of waste and industrial remnants that now fill the river’s flow.
Through the encounter between fading indigo blue and spreading rust tones, That Which We See a Stream is a Wound and What Once Flowed Blue Learns the Color of Residue highlight the shifting identity of the Citarum River itself. If Citarum was once closely associated with the natural blue of the tarum plant (indigofera), the river today is more closely tied to the colors of industrial residue. Across this body of work, the river emerges as a body that continues to flow while carrying wounds, sediment, and the remains of human-made systems of production and consumption.
