Kemala Hayati

I am Kemala Hayati, I am a textile artist. I was born and raised in West Borneo. Living surrounded by indigenous families with the natural beauty all around makes my thoughts, visions, and passionsinspired by this environment.

Title : Ula'an

Medium : Iron frame, wire, thread, knitting, hand-stitched, embroidery on Monk

Size : 50cm x 50cm x 90cm

Year : 2024

With weary eyes, holding a trolley, queuing, it stands before the checkout counter of a supermarket. Standing atop the ruins of a forest, it performs the rituals of shopping transactions, consumption its hand gripping a mobile phone as though it were human. It places a pile of food that must now be purchased, perhaps marking the loss of instincts once rooted in an arboreal and omnivorous life, spent largely among the trees now destroyed by modern development that has stolen its world.

Toy cars, no longer playful, recall the echoing roar of engines sounds that crushed its home. Heavy machinery resounds: hauling timber, excavating soil, flattening what remains of roots. A plant sprinkler left inside the trolley conjures the image of water no longer nourishing fertile ground. Hope fades; no space remains to celebrate life. An axe stands as witness to the forest’s wounds, while stacks of cement bags lie ready to bury the last roots beneath concrete.

Its heart beats painfully, mourning memories of branches once explored and sheltered beneath. What is the cashier thinking? Their gaze appears suspicious. A figure wearing a construction helmet calmly scans the items laid before them. Is there no room left to stay? What of tranquillity? Or is your home, your workplace, your space of leisure still not wide enough?

In the distance, the sky appears beautiful, a signpost marked “escape,” its direction no longer clear. With a heart still beating, it longs for a home that will never return.