ASTERIA ISKANDAR

By Rukii Naraya

Little Asti always wanted to be an architect / visual artist / designer. A tomboy girl who spend most of her childhood up in the rose-apple (jambu?) tree, collecting insects, caught in fight with the boys, but always enjoyed her after school drawing class.

Since when do you learn art?

I only took after-school drawing class since kindergarten until early primary school, but since there were too many after-school activities that I should attend (such as sports lesson, piano class, Qur’an reciting, etc) my parents finally decided to (only) provided me with tutorial books and learn it by myself at home.

What is your reason to do art?

I love beautiful stuff. Is that explained enough? Hahaha.

Okay, I am a very shy person when it’s related to personal life. I always find it hard to explain myself through words, and I’ve also got a poor vocab bank! I don’t talk much about my personal life to people even to my friends, so I speak trough art, I express my feelings and share my stories through visual.

What does it feel to make art?

feels gewd~………… Have you ever heard of “it feels good to share” phrase? That’s the kind of feeling that I get. Especially when I feel bad and down, art makes me feel light-weighted, like dropping my life-baggage little by little. Even though, that makes me have a lot of unpublished artworks! Some stories are best not to be shared. *blushed

What do you want to share through your works?

Stories, feeling, thoughts…

What are your preferable mediums? Why?

I change a lot depends on my moods and how much time do I have to create it.
Nowadays, I work a lot through photographs. I feel thankful that the place that I work for allows me to travel quite often. I am not a photographer, but it feels awesome when you are able to share your experience and stories through beautiful pictures.
From photographs, you can give some real stuff, I want people to feel like they were with me during those shots, seeing what I saw, feeling what I felt.

Your biggest dream?

To have my own adventure book that inspires people. Like an encyclopedia of the places I’ve visited. So, I’m gonna visit every corner of this place called earth and making a shot print of it. Shot print…erm like foot print, carbon foot print, and this “shot print” is using camera. Arrrrggh, I’ve told u I’m bad with words!

Who inspired you?

Biggest inspiration in life came from Jon Lennon & Mahatma Gandhi, but I always feel inspired by seeing nature, cultural stuff, tribal richness, and people emotions, so it is more to “what” than “who”

Now, what do you think of your own artwork?

Talking about photographs, I think its pretty tasty… but I really need to learn a lot! I’m really not well skilled in photography techniques! And… I should really have to start finding my own characteristic. I know, I’m not there yet.

What’s your next project?

Well…I’ll be out from this country soon for couple of weeks for some office assignment, and I’ll be back not only with photographs. Har… har… sorry I can’t tell you guys further more about this.