Singer, performer and artist Aine E. Nakamura and composer and performer Srayamurtikanti will make their first appearance at the Center for New Music. They will present each of their solo works, and a collaborative work they will premiere upon this occasion.
Aine E. Nakamura creates her idiosyncratic art of voice and body, focused on site- and time-specific art through site- and time-transcending stories. Her recent works include a Winning Work for Site-Specific Performance Grant at the Venice Biennale at its 50th International Theatre Festival in 2022, and her performance project at Berliner Festspiele’s 2022 Theatertreffen in Berlin, Germany. She has presented her solo exhibition at The Gallatin Galleries NY, her performances, mixed art, and compositions at The LAB, HfM Hanns Eisler Berlin, Errant Sound, A Concert of Electronic Music in honor of Mario Davidovsky, Dias de Música Electroacústica, New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival performed with cellist Madeleine Shapiro, October New Music Festival in Finland performed with MikroEnsemblen, and Abrons Arts Center with the International Contemporary Ensemble. An Awardee of the Fulbright Fellowship (Berlin, Germany 2021-2022).
Nakamura’s transdisciplinary art that is created from a few elements developed by moving closer to her woman artist identity, acknowledging her transnational complexity and ambiguity. Through her recent development and art-making, her focus is shifting toward simply “being” and “beings,” caring for undefined self. She will use her voice, body, and found/discarded objects for this show, pursuing a new language.
Srayamurtikanti is a stage name of Ni Nyoman Srayamurtikanti (Bali, 3rd October 1996). She is a musician and a composer based on Balinese traditional music (Balinese Gamelan). Sraya’s works are often concerned with gamelan instrumental, innovative, vocal and experimental music on Balinese gamelan. Sraya’s art developed by exploring the possibilities of playing gamelan, composing, combining different instruments, theatrical, and space responses. She performed her compositions “Empowerment” at the SouthEast Asian Music Symposium (Bangkok, Thailand), “Nuutsih” at Pekan Komponis Indonesia (Jakarta, Indonesia), “Speech Delay” at Music Gamelan Creative Competition (Bali), “Himpit” at Rocky Mountain Gamelan Bali Festival (Denver, Colorado-USA), “To Reckon through Complexities”
in collaboration with Gabi Motuba (South Africa) at Mutual Mentorship of Musicians (New York, USA), etc. Now, Sraya is a Gamelan Guest Artist Bali Teacher at Gamelan Sekar Jaya based on Berkeley, California (2022-2023) and Guest Artist Teacher/Instructor at Gamelan Bali Class at University of California, Berkeley.
Her first time living in the United State has given a significant impact for her life and she feels as if she is standing on two different cultures. Accepted-unaccepted, bound-released, logical-illogical. At this Center for New Music performance, she will use gender wayang, gong, and vocal, and represent the idea about her “life transition.”
The two artists whose arts inevitably involve gender inquiries with patriarchal backgrounds have discussed how they might be able to evolve from their and public labeling of “Women” Artists to “Artists” while both agree on the necessity of showing the hidden bodies to the world.
How can we break the barriers and borders of perceptions and assumptions, so that we can open possibilities of finding non-binary harmonies and connecting to intimacy? We propose and try to remind ourselves to break down the labeling about women and swim to the surface. We don’t know what to expect in this surfacing, but we hope to do so as Artists.