We are so happy and proud of Melati Suryodarmo who will receive the prestigious award the Bonnefanten Award for Contemporary Art (BACA) alongside with the opening of her Solo Exhibition I am a Ghost in My Own House today.

The BACA is the most important international award of the Netherlands for artists from other geo-cultural regions. In 2022, it is being presented for the eleventh time. The focus in this award lies on surprising, under-represented art practices that exceed or lie beyond the geographical and/or cultural boundaries of the dominant Western canon.

Melati has worked with Lilith several times and today at the ceremony at Bonnefanten she will perform Transaction of Hollows a commission and a Lilith production in 2016. We are so happy and proud of Melati.

Melati Suryodarmo (1969, Surakarta, Indonesia) is the eleventh winner of the Bonnefanten Award for Contemporary Art (BACA). The BACA is the most important international award of the Netherlands for artists from other geo-cultural regions. The BACA focuses on exciting, under-represented art practices that exceed or lie beyond the geographical and/or cultural boundaries of the dominant Western canon.

I am a Ghost in My Own House is Suryodarmo’s first major solo exhibition in Europe and the Netherlands. http://www.bonnefanten.nl/ 

Orient Express Yourself is a participatory performance by Dafna Maimon. The work functions as a food truck where the audience can buy falafel and pay for it by recounting personal experiences of family relations or patriarchal society. The price of a portion varies from 15 to 299 words, depending on questions asked by the salesperson. The conversation between customer and salesperson is transmitted via microphone to other customers, transforming the personal into a commodity. The society forming in the restaurant and its critical space can be empowering, although simultaneously emphasising the commercialisation of the private as one of capitalism’s strategies in the experience and commodity market.

The work is inspired by Orient Express, the first kebab and falafel restaurant in Helsinki, founded by Maimon’s family in the Forum shopping centre in 1985. Orient Express Yourself was first implemented at Lilith Performance Studio in Malmö in 2017.