Awakening the Terrains of Taxing: Kareem Soenharjo’s Debut Exhibition
An artistic practice often begins as an attempt to give shape to the self, and each brushstroke, lyric, or sketch becomes a small translation of an inner world. Along the path of self-discovery, some artists are drawn to the quiet radiance of the ordinary, allowing audiences to share in the subtle joy of subjects that feel familiar. This tradition of art finds value in sentiment, tending to a beauty that belongs to many. It lingers in the soft petals of a flower, the contours of a beloved face, or the calm surface of a pond. Yet there is a question that unsettles the comfort of these images. What happens when the familiar is interrupted by a darkening sky, a pair of watching eyes, or the sudden gleam of blood? In Taxing, Kareem Soenharjo fractures the surface of routine and summons the quiet terrors that inhabit our daily landscapes.
“There is a certain headspace that has never left me. It keeps expanding the more I live my life, and that headspace has been riddled with that feeling of taxation,” Kareem reflects in conversation with curator Zarani Risjad. His relationship to art is entwined with Carl Jung’s idea of shadow work, which he turns into a practice of confrontation and exploration. The weight of this shadowed state appears in paintings of desolate rooms, darkened figures, and misplaced body parts set against fields of black, white, red, violet, and blue. These scenes blur intimacy and reality as Kareem dissolves the boundaries of the subject. At times, he situates himself at the centre, although he erases or obscures his own face. At other times, he conjures a figure shaped like a shadow, playing with the alteration or multiplication of its form: they appear – in tenfolds – climbing mountains, or seated alone without feet. As viewers, we find ourselves wondering who they are. Are we seeing Kareem, an unnamed stranger, a haunting presence? Or are we seeing perhaps a muted version of ourselves? Whenever I ask Kareem for clarity, he returns to their open interpretation. “The work is however you want it to be.”
The search for these figures became a shared pursuit during the exhibition opening on 28 November. It began with Untitled (Jakarta Selatan), a painting of a black figure that appears to carry an invisible burden. Our conversation started with the simple question of deciding what it is this figure held. Many agreed it held nothing at all, and that this nothing mirrored the weight that pressed upon Jakartans and their (or perhaps our) relentless pursuit of capital. From this came further interrogation: is the weight we feel born from within or shaped by larger systems? The discussion ended without an answer, but it shifted toward the figure’s fangs, which give it a presence that is both monstrous and painfully real.
A different kind of conversation rose from Pond, a work that offered viewers a moment of stillness within the exhibition’s darker currents. Unlike the spectral figures, it leans toward realism and depicts a green landscape anchored by a lily pond. Kareem attends to the fibres of the plant as it glides on the water’s surface. I assumed it echoed Monet’s Water Lilies, but Kareem explained that it is a quiet ode to Millais’s Ophelia, only without Ophelia’s (actual) body. The irony in his statement reverberates in the painting, because I wonder where Ophelia's body is? Perhaps it is this absence that births its mystery. Kareem manipulates the depth of the composition, and invites us to imagine something hidden beneath the water; almost suggesting that if we sink into it, we might find her. Or, if we look gently to the left, we might notice faint traces of red that lead to where she rests.
These conversations reveal a rhythm within the exhibition, a slow movement between dread and tenderness that echoes the landscapes of our own emotions. Kareem asks us to linger in these shifts, to notice how the grotesque can heighten our sense of the gentle, and how even the calmest images can tremble with secrets. His works invite a shared vulnerability, as though we are standing together before our shadows and tracing their borders with uncertain hands.
The body of work inTaxing reveals its wide emotional range and suggests that this state does not belong to Kareem alone, but passes through many of us. Kareem reminds us, however, that taxing is not constant. It has an entry point and an exit, and it does not demand permanence. His debut exhibition turns toward the darkness we often hide from, shaped by the belief that hope can be found only through an honest meeting with what unsettles us. As he reflects, “I have been in the pit for most of my life, but I understand that the pit is only bottomless if you keep digging. Light is not only at the end of the tunnel, but also in the cracks throughout the tunnel.” His work presents the heaviness of existence so that moments of lightness can return with clarity. Perhaps to understandTaxing, we must step willingly into the dark and listen to its quiet language, because it is only from within the dark that light emerges with its true and patient form.
