Edita Atmaja Explores Time and Routine in Best Before Exhibition
In her solo exhibition titled Best Before, Jakarta-based visual artist Edita Atmaja digs into the meaning of time, routine, and the social pressures that often trap people in repetitive life cycles. Amid this hustle and bustle, quick and instant solutions are the chosen escape—even becoming dependencies. Through her works displayed at C ON TEMPORARY in Bandung, Edita challenges how we evaluate time and manage our daily priorities.
The Best Before exhibition stems from a series of questions: “Are we truly satisfied and happy with how we spend our time? Do we feel we haven’t achieved what we desire despite our best efforts? Do some of us wish to spend our time differently? Or do we feel like our time isn’t even our own?” These questions emerged during a conversation between Edita and her husband about the song “The Greatest” by Cat Power, which Edita feels resonates deeply with their current lives. "Every day, stuck in Jakarta traffic, we often talk about our ideal dreams, where we spend our 24 hours doing meaningful and truly enjoyable things," Edita shares. Ironically, these conversations seem to circle endlessly, with no real change in their lives—stifled by time-consuming routines.
This realization led Edita to understand that many of us live our lives based on obligations to others, social expectations, or ideals ingrained from an early age. “Even though we have our own big dreams and desires that we believe would make life more meaningful, it’s often hard to realize them due to the harsh realities we face, leading to doubt or despair,” Edita adds. This often results in a constraining routine where we strive to meet social targets like education, career, or financial stability. Yet, beneath it all, there’s an emptiness that makes us feel trapped, doing things half-heartedly every day.
In the Best Before exhibition, Edita uses various visual mediums to convey these ideas. Each piece is designed to make the audience rethink the meaning of time. The subjects depicted in her works symbolize practicality—dependence on everything instant—and the comfort many people crave in response to the increasing demands of life. Products like canned food, plastic-wrapped bread, and supermarket apples play leading roles in Edita Atmaja’s visual narrative. Through these everyday items, Edita recalls memories from her past, growing up in a big city with working parents. During this time, she often saw those around her caught up in the busyness of fulfilling responsibilities and personal achievements. “As a child, I was scheduled for numerous extracurricular activities outside school hours, with the expectation that I would eventually excel. The habit of strategizing and being disciplined with time every day became ingrained, leading to a fast-paced lifestyle and dependence on instant products,” Edita reflects. Her works, which bring back these everyday objects, not only represent the practicality we seek in daily life but also reflect the fast-paced lifestyle and the strong bond modern humans have with instant products. To embody the image of an instant lifestyle through visual art, Edita employs mass production methods such as silkscreen printing, 3D printing, and molding in most of her works. According to Edita, these techniques create repetitive forms, symbolizing the planned routines that repeat daily and the effects this has on those who live by them.
One of the most striking pieces in the exhibition is "Open in Case of Emergency," where Edita uses a gypsum cast shaped like a food can with the words "No Time" on its sides. This work illustrates how we often feel like we're running out of time trying to meet social deadlines, even though, like canned food, our time also has a limited shelf life. This metaphor highlights how frequently we get caught up in the endless pursuit of social achievements, ultimately leaving us feeling like we haven't achieved anything personally meaningful.
Edita also explores stippling techniques in her works, particularly in the series of drawings "Anticlimactic," "Potentially Pleasant," and "When Patience Pays Off." These pieces depict the contents of canned food, such as mushrooms, sardines, and Spam. The time-consuming stippling technique contrasts with the instant nature of the depicted subjects. Each dot placed with a pen represents the seconds dedicated to analyzing the meaning of time.
Another significant piece is the series "Contemplating as Breakfast," which delves into more existential themes. In this piece, Edita uses gypsum casts to create slices of bread wrapped in plastic. The work is accompanied by a daily schedule on one side and the phrase "Is It Worth Repeating?" on the other. The plastic-wrapped bread, sealed with a plastic clip labeled "1440"—the number of minutes in a day—becomes a symbol of the daily routines we often go through without questioning their true meaning. "Through this work, I want to question the purpose of repetitive routines—are the moments outside of these routines the ones that actually hold true value?" Edita emphasizes.
Best Before is not just an exhibition that challenges public thinking, but it also marks a significant milestone in Edita's development as a visual artist. Through this exhibition, Edita explores new mediums and topics, as well as techniques she had never tried before. Her use of gypsum casting, 3D printing, and screen printing on plastic demonstrates Edita's courage to step out of her comfort zone and present something new and fresh. "I'm always interested in trying things I've never done before. I also enjoy it when I can deliver an element of surprise in every new work," says Edita. Following Best Before, Edita hopes to continue her exploration, both in terms of topics, research methods, and technical aspects.
With Best Before, Edita introduces works that are reflections on modern life. In this exhibition, which runs until August 25, 2024, Edita invites us to pause and reconsider how we live our lives with the ever-passing time.
Documentation by C On Temporary Gallery
