Portrait Selection as Affective Act: Sara Ahmed’s Affective Economies in Setengah Rindu
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33153/brikolase.v18i1.8456Keywords:
Affective economies, Indonesian contemporary art, Portrait painting, Sara Ahmed, Sticky objectsAbstract
This study examines the affective logic underlying the selection of portrait subjects in Setengah Rindu (2026), a collective exhibition by the artist collective Simpullapan held at Galeri Raos, Kota Batu. The exhibition presents five portrait paintings by artist Dwi Christanto depicting world figures: Frida Kahlo, Princess Diana, Vladimir Putin, Mahatma Gandhi, and Tan Malaka, whose apparent thematic arbitrariness constitutes the central analytical problem of this study. Drawing on Sara Ahmed's framework of affective economies and the cultural politics of emotion, this article argues that the selection of these figures is governed by a coherent internal affective logic in which public figures accumulate emotional value through cultural circulation, becoming sticky objects to which feelings adhere and through which they are transmitted and contested. Using qualitative interpretive methods, this study analyzes documentation of the exhibition including artwork photographs, wall texts, and the artist's statement. Findings reveal that each portrait subject carries distinct affective qualities, constituting what this study terms an affective archive: a coherent emotional landscape assembled through the deliberate accumulation of sticky figures. This article contributes to emerging discussions of affect theory within Indonesian visual culture studies, a field in which this theoretical approach remains markedly underutilized.
Keywords: Affective economies, Indonesian contemporary art, Portrait painting, Sara Ahmed, Sticky objects
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