Mediocritic

Mediocritic is my very first exhibition, held on Ateliers Ouverts day, March 12, 2025. It was hosted as part of my residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, with the support of the Institut Français Indonesia. The exhibition brings together monologue, text, painting, and photography, all focused on resisting the lingering impacts of Orientalism in today’s world. It explores my journey of liberation and growing confidence in the city of Paris, while still carrying significant critique and doubt within myself. Through experimental paintings, raw domestic scenes captured in photographs, and whispered inner dialogues, Mediocritic presents itself as both protest and poetry.

Exhibition Views

❮ ❯

Photographs

Printed on satin paper, 29cm x 42cm

Paintings

Acrylic on art paper, 29cm x 42cm

Excerpts from the monologue

Chapter 1

Recently, I’ve been sad. My family lives in a village somewhere on Java Island. My mum was a farmer, and my big sister was a cleaner. I remember how we used to walk into the small forest behind our house, collecting twigs to light the stove. The brick stove. That was in the past, but we still use it, the tungku. We still live in poverty, and it feels normal to us. But that’s because everyone else lived the same way—or so we thought. There might be another world out there, but it certainly didn’t belong to us. We lived with what we had. We didn’t question it. We didn’t try to be someone else. I didn’t even know I could be someone else. There was nobody to look up to.

Every day we wake up, pray, and do our things. My nephew plays mobile games online. My niece stares at her reflection in the mirror, adjusting her face, testing out discounted skincare she bought from TikTok. Her room looks like a sinking Titanic. My sister sleeps. She has to wake up early, exhausted from her catering job during the day and has to clean someone’s house in the morning. We deep-fry the fish and eat it with rice. There’s no dining room. You can eat anywhere. My mum washes the dishes with rainwater in the back of the house, near the stove. The walls are green, blue, and pink. It feels so alive.

We still live in poverty. But it feels normal to us. It felt normal to me too... until I left. Now, I look at these photos, and I don’t know if I belong here or somewhere else. Maybe that’s why I take pictures of them: So I won’t forget.

We deep-fried the fish and ate it with rice. In my house, there is no dining room. You can eat anywhere. Here, people sip wine in galleries, discussing art and meaning. There, in my house, we eat with our hands, and nobody talks about meaning. We just eat.

I came here to Paris, and look at me now: I paint. Someone came to me and kissed me, on both cheeks, on lips, on my hips, handed me some paint, and they said, “You must paint.” But I never painted before, I said. “I see in you a soul of an artist—a dying one. You're confused and dying, but you can paint,” he said. I said, “Okay, monsieur.”

So I painted the city nights. The sky was so blue, the first nights I arrived in Paris. I was fascinated by it. By the blue. I painted windows and mirrored doors, as if I were looking out to a world where I was trapped. I painted bottles of wine... so many bottles. I am an extra-haram gay boy. A Muslim boy finding wine as cheap as this. You can go to a Franprix and buy wine for just two euros. In my country, the cost of a bottle of wine is a third of my rent. Back then, I didn’t drink. It was haram, forbidden by my religion. But here, I’m an extra-haram gay boy. Extra sinful. I will burn in hell. My teacher would despise me, and maybe my mother would cry. I don’t know if this is happiness? ....

Chapter 2

People might say that being in Paris, in the city, is liberating, is freedom, is abundance, is privilege. I’m feeling like I’m a wonder. I’m becoming a new person. I am another persona here. I’m freeing other forms of myself. I’m vomiting my creativity. I’m just the best version of myself. I look pretty, sexy, handsome, smart, artsy, and, most of all, maybe happy.

But that’s not all. This is not the end.

Part of what makes this experience so intense and beautiful is knowing it’s temporary for me. This will end.

If I stayed forever, Paris might just become another backdrop, another routine, and the magic would fade into everyday life. And because I’m leaving, every moment feels sharper, more meaningful.

I’m showing the images of my past in the village alongside my paintings from Paris. It represents a before and after. Maybe one side represents limitation, while the other represents artistic freedom— but in both, there’s a question: Am I enough?

There’s a self-portrait of myself. It looks like I’m very confident, but that’s just a mask. The Mask of Confidence. Maybe I look confident, but honestly, it’s laced with hidden elements, scratches, layered text, distortions—hints of the insecurity underneath. My pictures in girl’s dresses—sure, I look confident and pretty. But honestly, they’re heavily edited, and I’m not even sexy. It’s fake. I’m overconfident, but I’m also a self-critic.

In Indonesia, I felt like 20% happiness and 80% everything else—depression, self-hatred, repression. Here, in Paris, it’s a bit different. Maybe it’s 70% happiness, sometimes 77%. But never 100%.

I know I’m privileged here, but somehow that just makes it worse. Because what does it mean to be ‘free’ if you’re still questioning your own happiness?

What does it mean to be ‘free’ if you’re still questioning your own happiness?

If privilege can open doors, why doesn’t it erase the self-doubt?

I look at my paintings, and I’m not proud of them. They’re just couci-couça. My photos—well, they’re fine, but nothing to brag about. My writing? It’s stuck. Between something, but never quite there. And my beauty—honestly, it’s questionable at best. My personality? I’m a bitch. I know it. But I own it, I guess.

You know how Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City always has those "aha" moments, like when she types in her computer and says, “I wonder... maybe this is... bla bla bla...” Well, that’s me right now. I’ve always danced with this tug of war—on one side, there’s Paris, promising freedom, and on the other, I’m constantly wondering if it’s ever really enough. It’s like I’m caught in a loop of wanting more, yet questioning if I’ll ever truly be happy with what I’ve got. Maybe... I’m just Emily in Paris. And yes, I’ve watched all the seasons. Don’t judge.

Anyway...

And that’s part of the problem, isn’t it? The freedom, the liberation—it’s supposed to be everything I wanted. But instead, it’s opened me up to even more doubt.

Does freedom just make us more aware of what we’re not?

“Oh, you’ll make such a great narrative! Your very own story! You’re from Indonesia—oppressed, gay, celebrating Ramadan. This is your story, my friend. People are so going to love it...” But, hold on a second. I’m not just some poor, persecuted gay boy from a small village in Indonesia, coming to Paris for the first time. Please, no. I’m more than that. I’m not some poor show to be put on display for rich men in their designer suits, to be admired while they sip overpriced cocktails at rooftop bars.

I’m not the tragic, oppressed gay story packaged neatly for the "liberated" heteronormative world to pat itself on the back and say, “Look at how far we’ve come!” Nope, I’m not your feel-good diversity checkbox.

And let’s be real—I am definitely not the exotic "red" story to be consumed by the white gaze, not some tropical fantasy for your Instagram feed with hashtags like #wanderlust and #blessed.

I’m more than that. Trust me, I’ve got layers. Like a really delicious, spicy nasi goreng you won’t forget. And by the way, it's better than your kale salad.

So recently I have been sad.

Maybe I’m just ungrateful, because of this feeling that I’m still not enough. So my friends, this is my critique towards myself. This is me telling you that, maybe, I’ll never be full. Never be truly happy.

I know I’m supposed to tell you I’m finding freedom in this city. But this? This is me. Always cursed by mediocrity.

Mediocre, constantly questioning, constantly searching, constant feeling of not enough.

And that’s why I call it ‘mediocritic.’

And maybe, just a maybe, that’s the thing that makes me the same as you.