‘But why dry your flags on the balcony? The guilt of a nation cannot be washed away, not with soap nor scents.’

Peeking was a drawing series and artistic-journalistic project of a young person who recently migrated from the archipelago to the Belly of the Empire. This young person draws and writes down their impressions and interpretations of their new everyday, the navigating of a new reality forming a playful diary of one who wishes to write home, but doesn’t know whom to write it to.

The diary entries, themselves a document and an archive, deconstructs the symbolisms of the new home, such as German flags on balconies and its possible meanings. Others raise questions to power - such as the cleaning ladies who teach the migrant more about form and shapes, more than the prestigious art school itself. Still, some drawings aim to purely capture emotions of loneliness within the masses - such as feeling so welcomed in a noise concert that it the moshpit becomes the most important subject of the day.

Anyway, below you can find a collection of all the drawings. Please feel free to enjoy them.

This project was a collaboration with Otty W. who also wrote a curatorial text for it, alongside Dini Adanurani and Luthfan Nur Rochman. The project culminated in a solo exhibition in the space Forum Lenteng in Jakarta, Indonesia, in February 2020. Deepest thank you to Volta Jonneva, Alifah Melisa, Dhuha Ramadhani, and dear comrades who supported the production of the exhibition, and to Dhanurendra Pandji who moderated the public discussion.