Listen to me carefully, you bunch of snobs. If you have not yet succumbed to the mysterious interlacings and the emotional depths of Christine Ay Tjoe’s works, it is because you live on another artistic planet, probably that of dusty antiques and obsolete certainties. In the contemporary Indonesian landscape, this woman reigns as a singular authority whose pictorial language transcends borders with a virtuosity that makes half the artists of our time jealous.
Born in 1973 in Bandung, Christine Ay Tjoe evolved from an initial practice of engraving to an abstract expressionist painting that makes her one of the most authentic and sought-after voices in Southeast Asia. I am not talking about a simple passing trend, but a phenomenon whose paintings are sold for millions of Hong Kong dollars. Her work “Small Flies and Other Wings” was auctioned for the modest sum of 11.7 million Hong Kong dollars in 2017, propelling her among the highest-valued living Indonesian artists [1]. It is no coincidence that collectors snap up her paintings like starving people at an all-you-can-eat buffet.
What immediately strikes in Ay Tjoe’s work is this constant dialogue she establishes between the visible and the invisible. Her abstract compositions, with lines sometimes wild, sometimes delicate, become the stage for an exploration of the limits of our perception, where Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology had failed.
The philosopher Gaston Bachelard had already warned us that “the space seized by imagination cannot remain the indifferent space delivered to the measure of the geometer” [2]. Ay Tjoe seems to have fully assimilated this lesson, transforming her canvases into poetic spaces where emotions and sensations are intertwined. In her works like “Not Too Far” (2018) or “The Comrade” (2018), the organic forms seem to emerge from elsewhere, from an inner space where human consciousness dialogues with living matter.
Bachelard reminds us that “the poetic image is not subject to a push. It is not the echo of a past. It is rather the opposite: through the brilliance of an image, the distant past resonates with echoes” [3]. This resonance, I fully feel it in front of Ay Tjoe’s works, where each layer of paint seems to be a temporal stratum, an archeology of the human soul. The artist does not merely depict the world; she reveals its hidden foundations, the buried truths.
Bachelardian phenomenology invites us to consider the image not as a reproduction of reality, but as a creation in itself. For Ay Tjoe, the canvas becomes this space where the imaginary takes shape and substance. “When I see an empty canvas, it is a trigger and everything in my head gets projected there,” she confides [4]. This creative process, almost mediumistic, echoes Bachelard’s conception of imagination as “the faculty to distort the images provided by perception” [5]. Ay Tjoe does not reproduce the world; she reinvents it.
In her series “BLACK, KCALB, BLACK, KCALB” (2018), the artist creates a universe where black becomes the expression of a latent potential, of a dark energy present in every human being. This exploration of inner darkness resonates with Bachelard’s thought about darkness as a space for dreaming. “Night is not a space. It is a threat of eternity,” he wrote [6]. Ay Tjoe seems to have grasped this ontological dimension of darkness, transforming it into a space for existential exploration.
Bachelard reminds us that “the image precedes thought” [7]. This primacy of the image, this immediacy of aesthetic experience, perfectly characterizes Ay Tjoe’s work. Her paintings are not read, they are experienced. They require full immersion, a sensory availability that our hyperconnected era tends to make us lose.
Another interesting dimension of Ay Tjoe’s work lies in her exploration of the human psyche, which naturally leads us to the realms of Jungian psychoanalysis. Carl Gustav Jung, with his conception of archetypes and the collective unconscious, offers a particularly fertile framework for understanding the creations of the Indonesian artist.
Jung defines archetypes as “primordial images” inscribed in humanity’s collective unconscious [8]. These universal motifs structure our psyche and our relationship with the world. In Ay Tjoe’s works, notably in her “Spinning in the Desert” (2021) series, one perceives this archetypal dimension: the abstract forms seem to emerge from a common human background, like reminiscences of forgotten knowledge.
“The human psyche, like the body, represents a collective of inherited activities and functions,” Jung wrote [9]. This idea finds a striking echo in Ay Tjoe’s work, which draws from the depths of being to extract universal truths. Her paintings do not tell individual stories; they reveal fundamental structures of human experience.
The Jungian notion of individuation, the process by which an individual becomes psychologically an “individual,” a whole being, also seems to guide Ay Tjoe’s artistic journey. Her earlier, more figurative works have gradually given way to more abstract compositions, as if the artist herself were traveling this path toward a deeper and integrated awareness of herself.
Jung emphasized the importance of symbols in the individuation process: “A symbol is always the best possible means to express something unknown” [10]. The forms unfolding in Ay Tjoe’s works function precisely like these symbols, attempts to give shape to the unspeakable. In her aluminum plate engravings, the marks and strokes seem to be traces of a dialogue with the unconscious.
One of Jung’s most fertile concepts is the shadow, that repressed part of our personality we do not want to acknowledge. “Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the darker and denser it is,” he wrote [11]. This exploration of the shadow, of that “potential darkness” inhabiting every human being, constitutes one of the red threads of Ay Tjoe’s work, particularly visible in her “BLACK, KCALB, BLACK, KCALB” series.
The artist herself acknowledges this dimension: “I spoke of the potential darkness that exists within each of us, which gradually grows without even our realizing it” [12]. Jung considered this confrontation with our shadow necessary for our psychic development. Ay Tjoe seems to share this vision, transforming her paintings into spaces of recognition and integration of this fundamental duality.
Duality, precisely, is a recurring theme in Ay Tjoe’s work. Jung saw human consciousness as fundamentally dual in structure and considered the integration of opposites as one of the ultimate goals of the individuation process. In works such as “The Workers” (2009), Ay Tjoe juxtaposes black and white, creating a visual tension that evokes this inner struggle between the different facets of our being.
Jung wrote that “the encounter with oneself is one of the most unpleasant experiences” [13]. This confrontation with our inner truth, with our contradictions and shadow areas, forms the beating heart of Ay Tjoe’s work. Her paintings do not offer us complacent aesthetic escapes but confront us with the complexity of our condition.
The artist also seems to have integrated Jung’s notion of anima and animus, those feminine and masculine aspects present in every individual. In her compositions, the forms often oscillate between softness and aggressiveness, fluidity and rigidity, as if they embodied this perpetual dance between the masculine and feminine principles that Jung considered essential to our psychic balance.
What truly distinguishes Christine Ay Tjoe in the contemporary art scene is her ability to transcend simplistic dichotomies. Neither totally abstract nor truly figurative, her work lies in that fertile in-between where imagination can freely unfold. As Jung wrote, “creativity is seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought” [14].
Ay Tjoe’s work possesses that rare quality of speaking to us simultaneously on several levels: visceral, emotional, intellectual, spiritual. Her paintings capture the totality of human experience that Jung sought to grasp through his analytical psychology. They are not objects to be passively contemplated but invitations to an inner journey.
In her exhibition “Lesser Numerator” (2023), Ay Tjoe explores the relationship between the individual and the collective through the prism of mathematical fractions. The numerator, the part above the fractional line, represents the individual in interaction with the larger community symbolized by the denominator. This mathematical metaphor, evoking the tension between singularity and belonging, resonates deeply with Jung’s conception of the individual as a microcosm of the collective.
Jung wrote that “personality is the supreme act of courage in the face of existence, and man’s central question has always been to find a way to live beyond mere survival” [15]. This existential quest animates Ay Tjoe’s entire work, whose paintings can be seen as attempts to transcend the limits of our condition.
This ascent toward a broader consciousness, this integration of the different aspects of our being, Jung considered to be the ultimate goal of human existence. “Becoming oneself is a lifelong journey,” he wrote [16]. Ay Tjoe’s work testifies to this journey, this incessant quest for authenticity and wholeness.
What makes Ay Tjoe’s approach so powerful is that she does not merely illustrate these psychoanalytical concepts, she embodies them in the very substance of her works. Her paintings are not representations of the unconscious; they are direct manifestations of that psychic energy Jung called libido. The artist works in a trance-like state, as she confides herself: “I work almost in a trance” [17].
For Jung, authentic art draws directly from the deep layers of the psyche, where archetypes and the collective unconscious reside. “The artist is the unconscious instrument of his time,” he wrote [18]. Through her exploration of the inner abyss, Ay Tjoe becomes the spokesperson for our contemporary anxieties, for our existential questions in a world in perpetual mutation.
Ay Tjoe’s works reflect our own complexity, our own contradictions. As Jung wrote, “one does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by becoming aware of the darkness” [19]. This confrontation with our shadow, this recognition of our fundamental duality, is one of the most disturbing and necessary experiences contemporary art can offer us.
Christine Ay Tjoe offers us much more than paintings to hang on our walls. She proposes a descent into the depths of being, an initiatory journey through the successive layers of our consciousness. Her works are not decorative objects, but tools for self-knowledge, mirrors that reflect our own image, distorted, fragmented, but strangely recognizable.
So let yourself be swept away by these whirlpools of colors and lines. Let yourself be unsettled by these forms that oscillate between the organic and the ethereal. For it is precisely in this imbalance, in this zone of discomfort, that the true power of Ay Tjoe’s art resides. An art that does not stroke you the wrong way but shakes you and forces you to look beyond appearances, into the dizzying depths of your own being.
- “Small Flies and Other Wings was sold for HK$1.7 Million by the Phillips auction house in Hong Kong”, Art World Database, “Christine Ay Tjoe”, 2021.
- Bachelard, Gaston. “The Poetics of Space”, Presses Universitaires de France, 1957.
- Bachelard, Gaston. “The Poetics of Space”, Presses Universitaires de France, 1957.
- Ay Tjoe, Christine. Interview with Elephant Art, “Now Showing: Christine Ay Tjoe, Inside the White Cube”, July 15, 2016.
- Bachelard, Gaston. “Air and Dreams”, José Corti, 1943.
- Bachelard, Gaston. “The Earth and Daydreams of Rest”, José Corti, 1948.
- Bachelard, Gaston. “The Poetics of Reverie”, Presses Universitaires de France, 1960.
- Jung, Carl Gustav. “The Roots of Consciousness”, Buchet/Chastel, 1971.
- Jung, Carl Gustav. “Man and His Symbols”, Albin Michel, 1987.
- Jung, Carl Gustav. “Psychological Types”, Georg publisher, 1950.
- Jung, Carl Gustav. “Psychology and Education”, Buchet/Chastel, 1963.
- Ay Tjoe, Christine. Interview with Allie Biswas for Studio International, “Christine Ay Tjoe: ‘I will always treat every medium as paper and pencil'”, December 21, 2018.
- Jung, Carl Gustav. “Dialectic of the Ego and the Unconscious”, Gallimard, 1964.
- Jung, Carl Gustav. “Man and His Symbols”, Robert Laffont, 1964.
- Jung, Carl Gustav. “Present and Future”, Buchet/Chastel, 1962.
- Jung, Carl Gustav. “My Life”, Gallimard, 1973.
- Ay Tjoe, Christine. Interview with Elephant Art, “Now Showing: Christine Ay Tjoe, Inside the White Cube”, July 15, 2016.
- Jung, Carl Gustav. “The Soul and Life”, Buchet/Chastel, 1963.
- Jung, Carl Gustav. “Psychology and Alchemy”, Buchet/Chastel, 1970.
