In Search of Lost Memory – Riki Maulana

In Search of Lost Memory finds Riki Maulana exploring the emptiness carved by incomplete memory. Remembering (and searching) beyond mere nostalgia, Riki investigates how time etches absences into our personal history, leaving a space more defined by what is missing than what remains. His work stems from a contemplation of family, of father-son relationship and childhood. Exploring them is his way to unravel the distance between him and his father. It is a hungry, insatiable pursuit. 

Riki’s works present the body as a vessel for emptiness: hands that frame an absence, a cutout of hugging arms, cracked and vacant vases. A central portrait of his father is folded into unrecognisable shape, a direct visual metaphor for a memory worn thin by repeated handling. “Belajar Menjadi Saksi bagi Diri Sendiri” (Learning to Bear Witness to Oneself) offers a turn inward: the fragment of an arm locked in a self-embrace. It is a conscious, intimate act, an affirmation and an acknowledgment of the exhausting, endless search itself.

Riki uses a gum oil printing process, developing the exploration and experimentation of his uni final project with the same technique. He is drawn to its inherent characteristic similarities to faded old photographs: grainy textures, partial focus, and also the human imperfections we can see in the traces of brushstrokes. Images emerge from the paper like half-remembered dreams, resisting sharp clarity evoking the subjective nature of memory.

Through fourteen new works in his first solo exhibition, Riki utilizes alternative photography to give emptiness a visible form. These works help us to reflect on what is partially lost from ourselves, which still lingers within us today and present themselves as questions that drive us to continuous search. Happy exhibiting and getting to know yourself better, Ki!

Ananta D. Rahayu