Over the weekend Dia.Lo.Gue Artspace hosted the opening of Blink/Glance/Gaze, an exhibition featuring the works of Yaya Sung and Angela Judiyanto. The Mitha Budhyarto-curated exhibition invites the audience to consider their ways of seeing – the blink, the glance, the gaze – as the artists used these ideas to communicate their subjects.

Yaya Sung’s work is centered around human rights activism – addressing the subject of individuals that have either been killed or have disappeared for dissent, and done so primarily through the activism for transparency families of the victims have and continuously demand. Her Installation “And to Never, Never Forget: Kitchen Notes (a collaboration with Joey Christian)” has videos (1 documentary, 5 staged) of Maria Katarina Sumarsih preparing a favorite meal of her son, Br. Noma Irawan, who was killed by the military in 1998. Another of her work, a mixed media installation “And to Never, Never Forget: Memorial Kamis Payung Hitam”, has visitors pay 100 Rupiah to view photographs and products relating to Memorial Kamis Payung Hitam, famous for Kamisan, a weekly thursday protest in front of the State Palace demanding justice for their dead or missing relatives. 20 photos of missing or murdered individuals can be observed in the room with paint partly covering their faces, perhaps speaking of their fading memory in the public eye.

Angela Judiyanto addresses the subject of Blink/Gaze/Gaze through her personal observation and experiences. In “15 Blinks a Minute”, 15 being the average time a human blinks in a minute, she decides to immortalise moments that can be captured in that split-second. Bottles with words such as “uncertainty”, “emotions”, and “free” inscribed on them pour liquid with illustrations describing those scenes are laid out on tables. The bottle holding those moments are opened, poured and revealed to us. Her other installation, “What did I Miss?” has small film slides arranged in an acrylic light table with illustrations and messages written on them, again speaking on her personal ideas and memories.

As the theme of Blink/Glance/Gaze essentially talks about the varying degrees of attention achieved through the three described ways of seeing, Yaya Sung and Angela Judiyanto art takes a look at what we can experience in those moments as well as what we can perhaps miss.