Jessalyn Handojo

(2004)

Jessalyn is an emerging Indonesian artist who is currently a Junior at Jakarta Intercultural School (JIS). Her interest and passion for the Arts emerged from a young age. However, due to her busy schedule keeping up with her academic requirements, she never had the opportunity to study arts formally. Nevertheless, she found alternative ways to expose her artistic passion, whether participating in art showcases held by her school or selling her art to family members. For Jessalyn, art is a safe space where she could freely express her feelings due to its subjective nature. Her work touches upon the theme of the current-day social dilemma- in particular, loving yourself (self-love) as well as others. Not only does she find art as visually appealing, Jessalyn believes that through her artworks, she is also reintroducing or bringing awareness of the valuable messages we can get by understanding present-day social dilemmas to her audience. Her current institution recently selected her work Virus-Induced Lifestyle to be included as a part of the Interscholastic Association of Southeast Asian Schools (IASAS) art category.

Inspired by the relationships between individuals and social influences, Jessalyn Handojo aims to unfold the idea of how current social standards have reshaped one’s perception of self-love, insecurities, and staying true to oneself. With all the pretentious standards created through social media platforms, many teenagers grow up with unimaginable social expectations, making them grow dependent on other people’s opinions to determine their self-worth. Using her personal experience being a teenager living in this ever-evolving world, she believes that conforming to the current social norms has become a lifestyle- a priority. The cultural and social influences that continuously create new expectations force them to adapt, and by default, they look down upon themselves, hence lowering their self-esteem. Through her mixed media art, Jessalyn shares this struggle of having to conform by conveying a message to stay true to oneself and start appreciating ourselves more. As an artist, Jessalyn incorporates both 2D and 3D into her artworks. She elaborately plans her paintings by doing a thorough research and sketching but finds it fascinating how her work would look different from what she intended it to be.