Nona is a way how Indonesians address a young woman. It’s homonymous with other word from other country, such as: A younger Korean man uses 누나 (read: Nuna or Noona) to address their older sister or older female friends, and “Nonna” is a common Greek and Italian endearment to refer to one’s grandmother. In Latin, it translates to “ninth”, hence the shape that bears nine sides is called “nonagon”.

Celebrating the 9th exhibition on the 9th month, Baik Art Jakarta is pleased to present Nonalog, featuring 9 female Indonesian artists who convey their thoughts and researches in the form of art: on the idea of a “woman”, a conversation with oneself, as well as discovering and uncovering the untold stories from the past.

Ayurika was born in 1996 in Grobogan, Central Java. She studied at Indonesian Institute of the Arts (ISI), Yogyakarta, majoring in Fine Arts. She currently lives in Yogyakarta.

Ayurika’s paintings focus on the female body. The body is not presented naturally with the perspective or view that can give the impression of beauty, but it is presented as a very close reality, as if we can enter it. Ayurika’s works present bodily reality, not merely an image of the body. The bodily reality challenges the way to see the body as it is, instead of idealizing or mythicizing it. The body ideals and myth often related to the shape of the female body as the object of gaze or beauty discourse. On the contrary, the bodily reality presents meaning, both through experience of one’s own and other’s body. For Ayurika, the female body as the bodily reality can be mapped as a landscape full of symbols, in the dimension of time and nature, similar to a natural birth process.

Candrani Yulis is an artist from Yogyakarta Indonesia. She graduated from the Indonesia Institute of the Art Yogyakarta. As a young artist, Candrani presented her art using various media such as installations, images, and videos to translate her research findings into works of art and engage in public memory.

Candrani’s continuous and consistent enthusiasm to learn about the history and the position of women in society provokes critical questions about identity as a symbol of gesture in contemporary life. As a young woman, she tried to speak bravely in reviewing the religious system that she lived through. Candrani takes an Autoethnographic approach to study her personal experiences and challenges as a young woman who was born and raised within the system of norms and values of the Islamic religious community. Discourses that try to criticize the domination of religion in Indonesian people’s lives always get muffled and disappear from the conversation. The practice of Candrani’s art is really significant and contextual to the current situation because Indonesian society is facing a big challenge where religion has become an instrument of the political elite in fighting for power. Through several works in this discourse, she raises and discusses this subject in a wise yet poetic way through the language of art.

Cecil Mariani (born in Jakarta, 1978) is a designer, an artist, a researcher, and an arts and culture practitioner. Cecil is also a lecturer in undergraduate and postgraduate programs at the Faculty of Fine Arts at Jakarta Institute Of the Arts. She obtained a Master's degree from the School of Visual Arts, New York in 2013. She was a part of Komunitas Salihara in 2008-2011, then initiated TuaTuaSekolah with Lisabona Rahman and Felencia Hutabarat, an independent scholarship program to continue postgraduate education for her colleagues.

Apart from working as a strategic designer at Mariani Witabora, Cecil started Arisan Desainer Upacita initiative which operates in the field of alternative economic-production. She is also one of the organizational advisory boards for Sindikasi union (Serikat Pekerja Media dan Industri Kreatif untuk Demokrasi/Union of Media and Creative Industry Workers for Democracy).

An artist who uses the domestic realm in her work as a starting point for discussing broader matters such as the domestication of women’s politics, authoritarianism and fascism, patriarchy and capitalism, which are still there and have been her concern.

Dian Suci often displays her work with an awareness of space, depicts body experiences, and plays the composition of objects as metaphors of what she really wants to convey. Dian uses a variety of media for her works, including installations, paintings and videos.

Dzikra A.N.’s practice explores notions of primal quality and the human form through a series of bodily-form sculptures that tend to deformed. Most of her works using stoneware clay that begin with modelling process, at this stage the solid sculpture's body are hollowed through a digging process which left the upper surface of the sculpture. This carving action turns the sculpture into a vessel-like bodily form with a snatched skin then following by the firing process. At this point, the clay which slowly lost its mobility yet still able to respond the heat as a transformative acts that restrain its endurance of materiality. The whole process of creation open up the body as a vessel into a wider narrative that speak through both form and materiality. Dzikra’s sculptures and other works reflct a critical perspective on human existence in the face of rapid and alarming circumstances. She emphasizes the themes of resistance and repair, highlighting the resilience and adaptability of the individuals.

Henryette Louise (b.1981) is an Indonesian artist who is known for her installation artworks such as Lokositato mahluk #1 at Perpus S.14 Bandung, Lokositato #2 intro at Kebun Binatang Bandung and Lokositato mencari tanah air #4 at Museum Fatahilah. As she started to continue her study, works and lives in Bandung at 2007, Louise develops her skill and quality of techniques to pursue her artistic practice by became an apprentice and artisan as she’s working on sculptures. Since then, Both two dimensional and three dimensional works become her interest. Her artistic practice evokes her sense on exploring the relationship between materiality, history and environment to convey her perspective towards identity, home, belonging and the complexities of the contemporary society.

Maharani Mancanagara was born in Padang, West Sumatra (Indonesia). Her work reflects on and reinterprets Indonesia’s complex and sometimes sensitive issues of modern socio- political and cultural history through fictional storytelling. She studied printmaking at the Institut Teknologi Bandung, where she began to utilize drawing, print, painting and installation often time on used wood surfaces.

Drawing on her personal family experiences of relocation and aggression in Indonesia prior to independence, Maharani's work refers to and develops conversation about the condition of social equality, investigating its political and social complexity via the study of form and materiality. Maharani’s interest towards history began when she discovered her grandfather’s diary, which led her into a journey of intertwining a plethora of personal histories that reflect larger socio-political dynamics of 20th century Indonesia. In her study, she frequently met compelling personal narratives, often imbued with the source’s own subjectivity, which offers an alternative view towards documented history as well as revealing its complex layers.

Maharani currently lives in Bandung, Indonesia. She has held solo and group exhibitions in Indonesia, Taiwan, Thailand, Australia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and United Arab Emirates.

Restu Ratnaningtyas (1981, Tangerang) is an artist and illustrator who now works and lives in Yogyakarta with her child. Restu loves to explore various media, especially watercolor, paper, video, fabric, installation, and multimedia. Most of her works discuss events of everyday life. Her topics focus on small narratives as well as objects that are related to the balance of human lives.

Her solo shows include Memento: privatization room in Vivi Yip Art Room, Jakarta in 2008, Tantrum at Kedai Kebun Forum, Yogyakarta in 2016 and Subsume at Baik Art, Los Angeles in 2017. Restu has participated in international group exhibitions which include mnemonikos: art of memory in Bangkok, Thailand in 2013 and The roving eye at Istanbul, Turkey in 2014. She also exhibits her work at the Biennale Jogja XII, as well as the GOOD Art Residency exhibition at Van Every/Smith Gallery in North Carolina, USA.

Windi Apriani (b. 1987) lives and works in Bandung, Indonesia. In 2010, she earned a bachelor’s degree at the Faculty of Art and Design, Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), majoring in Painting.

She focuses on the field of Painting and Drawing, an interest she chooses and consistently carries out. Windi has participated in various exhibitions, including exhibitions held by the National Gallery of Indonesia and exhibitions at other galleries in Indonesia, including Jakarta, Bandung, Jogjakarta, and Surabaya, and abroad such as Singapore and South Korea. Windi also received various awards, including the winner of the category of talented young artists at the 2013 Indonesia Art Award, which was organized by the Indonesian Fine Arts Foundation at the National Gallery of Indonesia, and was a finalist in the 2011 Soemardja Art Award competition, at the Soemardja Gallery, ITB.