November 25, 2024
JAKARTA – There is a playfulness in Obi, the man behind the graffiti persona Sicovecas, which was apparent at first glance. The 35-year-old from Yogyakarta joked and shared personal anecdotes gleefully while talking about his artwork to gallery attendants.
“The plug for this lamp is actually from my lamp at home,” he said to The Jakarta Post during his first-ever solo exhibition in August at Artsphere Gallery in Kebayoran Baru, South Jakarta.
But looking at his artwork, from brushes of pastel colors on a canvas to a collage of materials on a wall, there is also grace, charm and most importantly, stories that he is trying to tell through his creations.
Take, for example, a gecko painted high above the wall. For many, the animal might seem a ubiquitous sight. But it was as pivotal as Sicovecas’ other colorful paintings on canvas to make the gallery feel like home.
“Previously, I’d never made the gallery this expressive, but Obi took the initiative to put his art all over the room,” gallery owner Maya Sujatmiko told the Post.
Before meeting him, Maya had seen his work and was “enamored” by Sicovecas’ ability to bring the outside world indoors, further applauding his sensibility as a “street artist” in maximizing fine art spaces.
“I draw the things that I see around me, that’s all my art is,” the visual artist says, explaining his street name Sicovecas from its three initial words (As I See).
And with a closer look, Sicovecas’ works do not simply describe physical spaces: The colors he uses, for a start, seem as if they refer to an evening sky, but more particularly, the one he observes and keeps in his heart.
Waving through a window
Obi started creating graffiti on the street in high school in 2006, exploring the narrow alleys and abandoned houses of Sleman, in northern Yogyakarta. The scenic elements in his artwork can be traced back to his hometown in Kaliurang, the closest village to the Merapi volcano.
“Because my style is abstract, I always rely on whatever is happening on the street, like when a meatball seller passes by with his cart or when another neighbor invites me into their house for a snack,” he said.
But whenever he stayed inside, he also looked out the window to seek inspiration, never ceasing to grasp for the outside world. This also informs his solo exhibition’s title “Behind the Curtain”.
“The easiest way for me to paint something outside is to look through the window, and when I draw the curtain, there’s an exchange of winds, light and views,” Obi explained, showing this example through a painting at the exhibition called “Golden Sunbath in a Sleepless Dawn”.
The nature around him plays a great factor and seemingly forms his painting style, which is an expressionistic mash of pastels. He recalled a memory of going home after school at dusk and seeing the clear blue Code River, the muted color of Mataram gutters and the sage-green rice fields surrounding him.
“Maybe I like blue because I loved playing by the river. I sought shelter in these places, so perhaps I did find tranquility in these pastel colors,” he said.
Growing up studying IT at a local university, Obi was a self-taught student in art. But the more he learned about how graffiti should technically be painted, the more he tried to divert from it and chose a version that is raw, unstructured and less aesthetically perfect.
But that lack of rigidity lends to a more human touch, which ends up becoming Sicovecas’ signature. It has also prompted brands to seek his artwork, from coffee shops and Vans shoes to the famed music festival Synchronize for their main stage last year.
Seemingly abstract at first, the pastel colors that graffiti artist Sicovecas uses on the canvas indicate a place, memory or people he considers home.
Home street home
If one draws a line from Sicovecas’ previous work up to now, the theme they will find most persistent and central in his work is home, and what constitutes it.
Despite his love for Yogyakarta and Jakarta as cities he has lived in, Obi has felt a painful difference between both cities.
“I’m part of the artist communities in both cities, but in Jakarta, you feel the wheel turning insanely fast, there is always a need to increase everything in size, which was unlike Yogyakarta, where things can be held just for the sake of it,” he said.
Which is why, at every turn, he tries to bring his hometown into his art. In Sicovecas’ artwork, shapes overlap, and Obi said this emulates the overlapping houses in Tamansari, a striking contrast to perfectly aligned housing complexes in Jakarta.
“I do see that idea of home as a parallel between the physical space and my own self as a Yogyakarta street artist,” he said.
And as he sets sail to London, the United Kingdom with his wife to seek a new home, Obi now aims to bring that Yogyakarta identity onto the European scene.
Obi (center) welcomes visitors along with his wife Harriet (left) as the two explain the meaning behind each piece of art, some of which relates to their relationship.
“While living in Jakarta, I still have my Yogyakartan-ness in my artwork, from the so-called ‘legend’ curtain to its gecko which we see a lot back home, so I believe me and my artwork will still retain that village-like identity even in the UK,” he said.
He is open to England as a new home, but he does not consider home a fixed place; it is within him and the people he loves.
Obi pointed to one painting titled “Family”, which initially seems like abstract strokes of color. Looking closer, there indeed seemed to be two figures embracing each other.
“I initially didn’t see those figures, but the more I drew, the more I saw them in the center,” he pondered. “Maybe it’s because my wife was away at the time, which made me feel homesick somehow.”