Jace Hermanto

The Impossible Mountain

2D Studio Art - Printmaking

In my work, I am interested in exploring the complexity of identity within the context of religious and gender traditions. I express my experiences living as a multi-racial, queer individual through the lens of a fictional narrative inspired by Southeast Asian tradition and folklore. Specifically, I am interested in analyzing and deconstructing character archetypes as a way to bring light to the concept of identity as performance and the multidimensionality of humanity.

From my queer, multiracial perspective, I find myself drawn to the idea of fictional characters who “fail” at what they’re meant to do: bad heroes and lazy gods. As both a queer person and an Asian American, I am under constant pressure to appeal to what a Western, cis-heteronormative society accepts, in regard to LGBT respectability politics and the “model minority” myth. There is also an inner conflict coming from being raised between different religions, Christianity and Islam, and navigating spirituality as a queer person overall. I question how to reject expectations set by identity performance while also reconciling with spirituality and tradition.

My interest in performing identity manifests in my current work through the creation of shadow puppets inspired by Wayang puppetry from the islands of Bali and Java. My research in Wayang began as a way to navigate through my own rocky relationship with race and tradition as a half-Indonesian. The normative expectation of Wayang is to depict a traditional South/Southeast Asian epic such as The Ramayana and The Mahabharata, which feature strict, somewhat one-dimensional character archetypes and a harsh divide between good and evil. My work purposefully strays from normative Wayang, as I craft puppets of my own fictional characters and operate them in a playful, carefree manner. My goal is to represent the way one interacts with tradition when it is not limited and how it changes with the people that practice it.

Working in print has enabled me to transform my work into new forms through the creation of multiple. Using the printed multiple has allowed me to amplify my message by transforming the space of my exhibit into a diorama world for my shadow puppets, which serves to represent the true multifaceted nature of identity. The process of print is like several transformations occurring over time, starting with a blank slate and interpreting a drawing through the matrix, which not only allows for repetition but for variation that expands on the topic. For this body of work, I start with the print which I then bring into the tangible, physical world. I find I am able to bring new meaning to the work by bringing it from the two-dimensional plane to the three-dimensional and further. This process represents my exploration into the dynamic, transformative nature of existence from a queer POC’s standpoint.