In this chapter, I discuss women's performance art in contemporary Indonesia, focusing on works by an individual artist, Arahmaiani, and the practices of an artist collective known as Kelompok PEREK. The chapter explores the link between feminism and performance art in Indonesia, two fields that are still being redefined and challenged by their own practitioners. In contrast to my discussion on the themes of motherhood and maternal subjectivity in the previous chapter, the reading in this chapter analyses artistic practices that openly declared the artist's feminist intentions, which are strongly related to the type of medium that they employ.

Performance art has been an important artistic strategy for many feminist artists in Europe and the USA, especially during the 1960s and 1970s. Performance art was (and still is) seen as a medium capable of challenging the ways in which the female body is represented in visual arts and popular culture. Using the artist's own body as the primary medium, performance art is able to include diverse perspectives. As feminist politics is also the politics of the body, the particular political and social issues with which feminist artists engage tend to be issues of visibility, and their work provides a clear analogy between the experience of the female body and women’s position within visual arts.

Arahmaiani has built an outstanding international career by using performance art as her primary medium of expression. When she first came to international attention in the 1990s as a “feminist” Indonesian artist, it was due mostly to her strong performances that addressed women’s issues in Indonesia. Artists from Kelompok PEREK predominantly used performance art in their early years as a tool to undermine the patriarchal discourse in Indonesian society. Their performances explored the perception of femininity as a feminist strategy in post-Suharto Indonesia.

In this chapter, I investigate to what extent and in what ways Western models have influenced Indonesian women's performance art practices. I also analyse what local differences arise given the nature and roles of performance art in Indonesia's socio-political environment, and I examine understandings and interpretations of “feminism” in this context.

As discussed in Chapter 1, “feminist art” is still far from clearly defined in the discourse on Indonesian art; likewise, the nature of “performance art” itself is also still undergoing discussion and debate (Ruangrupa 2002; Wijono 2003; Berghuis 2006; Listyowati 2006).