An easy trap to fall into when it comes to single-artist retrospective exhibitions is reducing interpretation of the artworks to a reflection of the artist’s biography. However, biography is unavoidable in the case of the late Balinese artist I Gusti Ayu Kadek Murniasih’s (1966–2006) exhibition at Gajah Gallery, which offered a painfully intimate cross-section of what it meant to be both female and powerless during her lifetime.
The presentation (2001) is strangely tragicomic in the way it alludes to Murni’s past rape in the title, yet portrays a quirky alien-like female that would not look out of place in a . film. With her head coldly sliced out of the frame, this female form in teasing lingerie is exposed to the voyeuristic violence of the (male) gaze, countered only by that of a single eye staring out unnervingly from her waist. Thin lines feathering out from this eye evoke the form of a parasitic creature, alive with a frisson of dangerous energy that feeds off this (male) gaze, again throwing into question the gendered stereotype of the woman as passive, fetishized site of desire.
