Work in Progress: Citra Sasmita

Citra Sasmita learnt the Balinese tradition of Kamasan painting from the Hindu priestess Mangku Muriati, one of few women allowed to practise the technique. In Sasmita’s vast paintings on cow hide, she challenges Kamasan painting’s presentation of women ‘for their sexuality, their procreative function’ and instead conjures ‘nature’s feminine energy’.  In visions encircled by flames, female bodies give birth to trees, rivers and oceans. Sasmita signals our entry into a posthuman world with ‘a new knowledge that has not yet been written’.

Ahead of Frieze New York, Sasmita’s first solo show in the US, presented by Yeo Workshop, she reflects on the focus and collective energy she finds in the mountains, how to reconcile art and nature, and what it means to bring a new cosmology into the concrete reality of New York.  

Livia Russell Can you talk about your new work for Frieze New York?

Citra Sasmita The title of the exhibition is ‘Vortex in The Land of Liberation’. It’s a reflection on how people are now looking to the East for a way of life and philosophy. I’ve been thinking about how shrines and temples are created to commemorate the history and land of a place. 

The installation includes hanging cowhide paintings with beads, and a suspended omega-shaped painting. The omega shape refers to Rangda, a powerful female witch figure in Balinese mythology, whose knowledge comes from her tongue: whatever she speaks is a prophecy. In Balinese philosophy, we have inherited a concept called Tri Hita Karana – a trinity that connects spirituality, the human and nature. This concept helped me to see my installation as a ‘theatre of the body’. I invite people to enter my cosmology, to navigate their own feelings there.

LR In the past year, you’ve exhibited all over the world – London, Sharjah, Hawaii, San Francisco, Sydney, Mallorca. How has this influenced your new work?

CS I’m really sensitive to the context in which I exhibit my work. Going to Hawaii helped me to get a sense of US and Indigenous histories. In their connection to the land, nature and the volcano, the Indigenous people of Hawaii are very similar to the people of Bali. At East-West Center in Hawaii, I saw a mural made by the Indonesian maestro Affandi. In Wisdom from the East, Affandi paints the hand of God as wide and long as the Pacific Ocean. The hand holds three figures: Semar, a figure from Indonesian mythology, Mahatma Gandhi, a symbol of peace, and the Chinese philosopher Laozi. From Affandi’s mural, I learned how to bring abstract ideology into a force for action and a commitment to nature. 

For Frieze, I want to create a spirituality that can be accepted by people who live in ‘concrete jungles’, whose nature is concrete buildings. In my installation, steel structures connect to the urban space, while the walls are painted green. In Bali, we see green in the trees, in the leaves, but in the city, green is a colour – it has a semiotic function, it’s tells of the feeling of nature.

LR How does gender figure in your vision of nature?

CS Placing the woman figure as the protagonist in my painting is my political statement as a feminist. I’m responding to Balinese patriarchal narratives I’ve inherited in which women are presented for their sexuality, their procreative function, as trophies. I challenge this gaze by making all the figures in my work women. Nature has a feminine energy. In my work, a woman’s body is giving birth to a tree, a river, an ocean. A volcano is often seen as masculine because of its eruption, but it’s also feminine. Lava flows slowly, gently, and that softness gives us time to run to safety. Mother Nature still cares for humans, even when we treat nature as an object to be destroyed in the name of progress. 

Our people still believe nature represents our body and its organs: the rivers are our veins, the ocean is our blood, the mountains are our breasts. If we destroy nature, we also destroy our body. Nature is the macrocosmos, our body is the microcosmos. Here, art remains integrated with ritual and social culture. In Bali, it’s less about commercializing art and more about seeing art as door that opens on to new knowledge. To make a new cosmology in my work, I play with the experience of a woman’s body giving birth, the way the womb opens to new life. 

LR The omega shape feels also distinctly womb-like. Can you talk more about the significance of your material choices?

CS The materials I use – cow hide, beads, minerals – are related to the cultural memory of Balinese ritual. Cowhide is used in ceremonies in Bali that happen once every 50 and 100 years to mark a huge reconciliation with nature. When I make paintings with beads, minerals and cowhide, I’m performing my own reconciliation with the art world. The cow is sacrificed to purify the land, in a prayer against disaster. I see my artwork in a similar way: it’s a purification.

I combine a lot of cloth in my work. In Bali, women weave for their whole lives, and they pass down their creations as heirlooms. I’ve inherited cloth from my mother and grandmother. The memory of their bodies is in the cloth. You put all your knowledge of being a woman into the cloth. I feel a strong calling to use cloth as my main material. It creates a kind of complex cosmology. Before the 1930s, when European painting began to influence of the art of Bali, we only made art for devotion, to decorate temples. We didn’t believe in the durability of art. We would cremate artworks, but the artistic knowledge would remain in our bodies, ready to be reincarnated. 

LR How do you approach the tradition of Kamasan painting?

CS I’ve been researching Kamasan painting for six years. I learned the technique from Priestess Mangku Muriati, who negotiated with her father to be allowed to paint. Traditionally, the men are taught the techniques and narratives of Kamasan painting. They design the composition of the theatre of the canvas, while the women are the colourists, which is more labour-intensive work, involving grinding the pigment from stone and making glue. The men still get the credit. 

Female painters navigate the old narratives with a different gaze. They depict more female figures, they show Balinese women fighting in the war against Dutch colonialism, which is rarely shown by male Kamasan painters. My iconography is similar to that of Kamasan painting, but I’m exploring more anatomy, language and experience. I’m creating a new coding of philosophy, rather than illustrating old manuscripts.

LR How do you navigate past and future through Kamasan painting?

CS One of the teachings of our manuscripts is that there is something illogical about our consciousness, that it’s already written. If you dig deeply, you find that our manuscripts are not only talking about historical events, but also about prediction, fiction, opinion, the calendar. The complexity of this provides endless inspiration for me. I’m interested in how our iconography can have an archetypical relationship with another culture in the world. When I go to Brazil, for example, Balinese iconography touches that of the Amazonian people, and similarly in Asia or Hawaii. There is a language that resonates. 

In my painting of a vortex – symbolized by the snake and fire – we’re entering a posthuman world, a meta world, not only digitally, but in our acceptance of a new knowledge that has not yet been written. The day I hung my painting in Hawaii, the Kilauea volcano erupted. It’s an offering to the land. I started to believe that you have to see nature as superhuman. I think we’re already entering that kind of mindset.  

LR What does time in the studio mean to you?

CS My studio is located in Ubud. I rent the space and pandopo from the family of the high priest Brahmana Budha. When I finish a canvas, I just roll it up and put it in the corner of the room. The space is surrounded by nature. Looking up and seeing the trees, I feel the inspiration for my paintings grow. The energy of the mountain gives me focus; it brings me to a meditative state. I cannot start a painting if I feel any anger, sadness or resentment. I need to clear my body and my mind before beginning. It’s very hard to sketch on cowhide, so I have to begin directly with a pen. It’s about intention. If I make a mistake, I add something spontaneous. As humans, we always want everything perfect, but accepting a mistake is also very enlightening. 

I work with two assistants who help me with the beadwork. I really like to work in a collaborative way, involving a community of women in my painting. I can sense the collective energy from them, and it’s really triggered me to think about what kind of language I want to use in my painting. 

LR Are beads a new material for you?

CS I began using beads when I made the work for my Barbican show [2025]. Historically, beads were important in maritime trade, but in our culture, beads are used to cleanse – or neutralize – energy. When the Balinese build houses, they bury precious beads and minerals such as diamond, gold, silver in order to cast away bad spirits and ground their houses so that lightning will not strike. 

LR How do you see your practice developing?

CS I would love to explore maritime culture. In Balinese culture, we have a journey concept called Nyegara Gunung – from the mountain to the sea. All this time, I’ve been researching the mountain aspect, the energy that stays in the mountains, but I haven’t yet developed the coastal context. I want to look at how maritime culture has influenced or threatened other islands in the archipelago, with connections formed not only through trading relations but also geopolitically. What kind of civilization emerges when different cultures – like Islamic and local cultures – meet, integrate and acculturate? How does tolerance form through those connections? That’s what interests me. We live in such a global context where we’re free to connect, but we still come from different cultures. What gives us a shared vision? That’s the question I’m exploring.

Further Information

Frieze New York, The Shed, 7 – 11 May, 2025. Tickets are on sale – don’t miss out, buy yours now. Alternatively, become a member to enjoy premier access, exclusive guided tours and more.

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Frieze New York is supported by global lead partner Deutsche Bank, continuing its legacy of celebrating artistic excellence on an international scale. 

^{Main Image: Citra Sasmita’s studio}