Jul 03, 2023 · Sara Giannini
Hello and welcome
On this page you will encounter the protagonists of Stories of Wounds and Wonder: the she rat / narrator Puteri, the long-tailed monkey Moni, the dog Bello, and the sparrows Trini and Lima. Each of them is introduced by a drawing and a text recounting their life story, challenges and connections.
The drawings are mostly preliminary studies, sketches indeed, in which Juliastuti is learning to depict her characters and environments ahead of the upcoming publication. Drawing is a key tool of Juliastuti’s research and writing process. Differently from photography or video, drawing is seen by the author as a form of mutual engagement with her subjects of study. Passing through the body of the researcher, the act of sketching enables a form of representation that does not aim to immediately objectify, crystallize and capture, but that on the contrary leaves room for care, personal interpretation, and slowness. Especially within a research context that tackles issues of feral vulnerability, avoiding ‘capture’ is for Juliastuti both an ethical and aesthetic decision.
The introductory texts are instead the result of a manifold process of self-translation, as they have been written in English exactly at the same time in which the script was being written in Indonesian, Juliastuti’s native language. On the one hand, they open up the intimacy of writing to the outside world, allowing readers to enter the construction of a fictional universe as it is being built and possibly unbuilt. On the other hand, they carry these characters' life stories into English, the language which the script will be later translated into for the book. This first incursion into English raises questions of both literary and cultural translation, as beings, myths, practices and landscapes well rooted in Indonesia and in the Indonesian language are moved into and carried by linguistic vehicles that are unanchored from that very context. These questions strongly resonate with Juliastuti’s scholarship on colonial displacements, from her research on the ‘Commons Museum’ to broader reflections on ethnographic collections and displays. If you are curious to read Juliastuti’s work on these topics, please have a look at the reading table at the bottom of my extended curatorial note here.
The drawings are mostly preliminary studies, sketches indeed, in which Juliastuti is learning to depict her characters and environments ahead of the upcoming publication. Drawing is a key tool of Juliastuti’s research and writing process. Differently from photography or video, drawing is seen by the author as a form of mutual engagement with her subjects of study. Passing through the body of the researcher, the act of sketching enables a form of representation that does not aim to immediately objectify, crystallize and capture, but that on the contrary leaves room for care, personal interpretation, and slowness. Especially within a research context that tackles issues of feral vulnerability, avoiding ‘capture’ is for Juliastuti both an ethical and aesthetic decision.
The introductory texts are instead the result of a manifold process of self-translation, as they have been written in English exactly at the same time in which the script was being written in Indonesian, Juliastuti’s native language. On the one hand, they open up the intimacy of writing to the outside world, allowing readers to enter the construction of a fictional universe as it is being built and possibly unbuilt. On the other hand, they carry these characters' life stories into English, the language which the script will be later translated into for the book. This first incursion into English raises questions of both literary and cultural translation, as beings, myths, practices and landscapes well rooted in Indonesia and in the Indonesian language are moved into and carried by linguistic vehicles that are unanchored from that very context. These questions strongly resonate with Juliastuti’s scholarship on colonial displacements, from her research on the ‘Commons Museum’ to broader reflections on ethnographic collections and displays. If you are curious to read Juliastuti’s work on these topics, please have a look at the reading table at the bottom of my extended curatorial note here.