Materiality in art is never just about substances or surfaces—it reflects the ideological choices that shape an artist’s practice. Materials carry histories, imaginations, and metaphors; they structure how a work begins, unfolds, and communicates. In this exhibition, Maharani Mancanagara and Meliantha Muliawan explore material experimentation as both a conceptual method and an ethical stance.
Responding to the urgency of environmental concerns and the problem of waste in artistic production, both artists step away from the materials that have long defined their practices. Their search for more responsible approaches led them to misel, a newly developed cellulose sheet made from spent coffee grounds at the Institut Teknologi Bandung. By adopting this biodegradable, science-driven material, the artists enter a space of transition—one that nurtures new forms, new processes, and new imaginaries.
Meli reconfigures everyday objects through distortion and reconstruction, using misel to imitate wooden frames and tree segments, inviting reflection on the future of our vanishing natural materials. Maharani reworks discarded wood from her studio and experiments with abstraction, collage, and gesture, allowing forms to speak without predetermined narrative. Her misel-based hand sculptures and analogue moving-image devices open a tactile, intimate encounter with material and memory.
Together, their works propose materiality not as a passive component, but as a living collaborator—one that holds environmental critique, poetic possibility, and the courage to imagine different futures. This exhibition marks a shared shift toward responsible making, cross-disciplinary dialogue, and the generative unknown of new material worlds.
Alia Swastika
