Egga Jaya
Egga Jaya (b. 1994) is a Bandung-based artist whograduated in 2018 from the Printmaking Studio of BandungInstitute of Technology (ITB). His first encounter with art wasthrough the medium of painting and drawing. He then triedto concentrate his interest in art graphics of printmaking upuntil now. As a result, following up on numerous variablessuch as paper and its textures, bronze plates eaten byFaecal, and repetitive prints created a specific drowningeffect upon the time becomes his creative process. Hetried to recreate a certain drowning ambiance during hiscreative process. He's interested in knowing beyond whathe explores about the human sense, to experience thingsto their extreme limits.
Most of his works focus on the process of exploring andexperimenting with sugar materials, by using the sugaraquatint technique. Sugar itself is a material that we findin our daily lives. It makes his artwork doesn't involveexclusive art theories and becomes universal, makingit easier for people to understand what Egga created.Furthermore, Egga's creative process often involves thecollective memory of a certain community.
During his artistic journey, Egga then realized that thereis an aesthetic difference between what’s in the Westand what's developed in the East. He sees that eastern abstraction aesthetics tend to respond to cultural, socio-political, historical conditions, etc., and this is what Egga does in creating abstractions by Hejo Tebu: Suiker Confection (2022) and J.V.D. Bosch Landscape (2022). Although Egga still forms the artwork abstractly andfocuses on material experimentation, he then injects thesocio-political and historical context in making his artwork.
Through these artworks, Egga wants to convey that the roleof sugar in Indonesia during the transitional period of theindustrial revolution is very valuable. Under the Dutch EastIndies, the sugar industry was built massively, impactingthe development of scientific studies ranging fromagricultural to mechanical science and technology, as wellas the construction of railroads. Because of this, Indonesiabecame the world's largest supplier of Gulden (Dutch goldcoins) when the VOC was still in power. This work attemptsto describe the exploitation of the VOC in Indonesia, oneof which is in the construction of sugar industry factories.
Most of his works focus on the process of exploring andexperimenting with sugar materials, by using the sugaraquatint technique. Sugar itself is a material that we findin our daily lives. It makes his artwork doesn't involveexclusive art theories and becomes universal, makingit easier for people to understand what Egga created.Furthermore, Egga's creative process often involves thecollective memory of a certain community.
During his artistic journey, Egga then realized that thereis an aesthetic difference between what’s in the Westand what's developed in the East. He sees that eastern abstraction aesthetics tend to respond to cultural, socio-political, historical conditions, etc., and this is what Egga does in creating abstractions by Hejo Tebu: Suiker Confection (2022) and J.V.D. Bosch Landscape (2022). Although Egga still forms the artwork abstractly andfocuses on material experimentation, he then injects thesocio-political and historical context in making his artwork.
Through these artworks, Egga wants to convey that the roleof sugar in Indonesia during the transitional period of theindustrial revolution is very valuable. Under the Dutch EastIndies, the sugar industry was built massively, impactingthe development of scientific studies ranging fromagricultural to mechanical science and technology, as wellas the construction of railroads. Because of this, Indonesiabecame the world's largest supplier of Gulden (Dutch goldcoins) when the VOC was still in power. This work attemptsto describe the exploitation of the VOC in Indonesia, oneof which is in the construction of sugar industry factories.