Tiarma Sirait

 Tiarma Sirait is a Bandung-based painter & fashion artist who aims to support diversity in Indonesian painting & fashion art through active participation in the local & international art scenes. She began to study painting from the Indonesian senior artist: Barli Sasmitawinata when she was in Junior High School. Later  she continued her academical studies in the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) in Textile Design, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) in Fashion Design & a STINT (The Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research & Higher Education) scholarship Program, Master in Fashion & Textile Design at University of Borås, Sweden. Her painting & fashion performance has been acknowledged by many international arts institutions. She has intensively participated more than 300 exhibitions in many domestics & overseas exhibitions. Tiarma has received many astonishing awards in Creativity Designs & Art Awards from many countries.

 Tiarma has worked quite consistently with pink since the beginning of her career as a painter & fashion artist in 1998. Her artwork uses pink as the main color. She uses this color to give an eccentric sensation for her creation. She used pink also because the color is very girly, kitsch, synthetic. Tiarma has brought up pink plastics & synthetic fur to highlight the fickleness, volatility & falsehood that permeate our dearly held beliefs, influences & lifestyles. It has been her signature to use this brilliant color in her artwork.

Through her bold conceptual approaches to art, fashion design & pop culture, Tiarma has explored themes such as love & lust, foreign influences on Indonesian culture & mass consumerism to name but a few. Her art is intended to show the hyper reality in the contemporary context.

Tiarma creates conceptual costumes which are designed to give special experience on the stage and to function both as a fashion object and as a sculptural installation object. Art and Design production exists in a dialectical relationship between a society and the culture, and also, between an artist and the viewers. We live in a complex transnational and global meeting, mixings and clashing of different cultural perceptions at an increasing rate and pace as never seen before. Tiarma’s awareness has been sharpened to her origin culture especially in the aesthetic and function of the traditional clothing. Her long-term experiences have always been tended to the extravagant appearances and objects through the choice of colors and materials, which referred to certain subject. Tiarma’s intention is focused on the variety Indonesian Batik combine with the European Style. The basis of Tiarma’s Fashion Art Performance / Installation "Transporter & Transformer " is the process of cultural interaction, where she transports her culture and transform it in relation to other cultures that the artist meet in different country and in different form. She use clothing as her medium to express ideas. Tiarma’s fashion art costumes are based on combination between the influence of Indonesian Batik (East), European Victorian Style (West) and her personal style of design (Individual Axis). Her  personal intention is to create a contemporary batik style, which can be used as part of the cultural ‘Transporter’ concept. Batik is used as it is much more advanced compared to other Indonesian contemporary designs, which employ traditional sources. Since 2015 she is painting with Batik theme. She used fashion in her painting as a medium to express the journey of her performances. She shows her exploration of her free spirit in her painting. Tiarma is passionate about developing the creativity of young Indonesian designers through workshops & internship programs & events.

Pic: Article on Tiarma Sirait in the malayalam monthly magazine Prasadakan by Bindu P V.