Jayanto Tan

07 February - 06 March      Mantra, I'm a ghost in my own home

Link to artist's website

Jayanto Tan’s installation, Mantra, I’m a ghost in my own home is SLOT's offering in celebration of Chinese New Year.

For Jayanto New Year is an opportunity for celebration. Indeed the Chinese character, Double Happiness that is both the subject and form of his installation is a celebration of marriage. In this case, perhaps it articulates remnant marriages and marriages yet to be forged between Jayanto and his many homes.

Jayanto is Chinese, although he was born in Indonesia, which casts him as a part of many sub-groups including the Peranakan culture. That is the culture of Chinese immigrants who assimilated the Malay culture and in the process established a uniquely hybrid culture expressed in dress, cuisine and architecture. Now Jayanto is also an Australian, a condition that he has wittily summarised with the invention of the Pandan Lamington, pandan being a Malay food additive that turns everything an optimistic green color. Here in the wide brown land a green lamington offers double happiness for sure. One can be found on the left in Jayanto’s finely sculptured ceramic, albeit rendered in monochromatic white.

Here it has been married with other delicacies into a wreath, a European symbol that simultaneously celebrates birth and death as the unity of eternal life.

In response, the Mantra, I'm a ghost in my own home has been deeply considered. As Jayanto observes “the thousands text of ‘Double Happiness’ could read as my mantra for future happiness…Perhaps there is no future!”

Tony Twigg