Forever in Progress
by Eleena Bakrie
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Dear Eleena, Do you remember your first art works and how has your style evolved through time? Watercolors really did it for me. I was a graphite pencil wielding kid, very hesitant to explore colors growing up. My first watercolor painting was when I created anything worthwhile in colors. It was a painting of the little prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, my all time favorite character. Nowadays I’ve gone digital and I have been developing that part of me, though friends complain about how I’m always plastered on a Cintiq monitor. I don’t think I would have decided to pursue a creative career if I hadn’t made those watercolor paintings. |
Photo: courtesy of the artist |
I didn’t think much about it, but looking back I can see traces of watercolor in my first animation, Ibu. It’s really hard watching it now that I know a little bit more about graph editors though.
From Malaysia to Savannah, GA. How are you enjoying this journey?
I definitely wouldn’t have imagined myself here two years ago. I come from a rugged little island called Borneo. I’d like to think that it’s also a little island that floats on the expansive ocean inside of me so I get to take it wherever I go.
America is amazing and also very different from how it is portrayed on television. (It’s probably safe to admit my entire knowledge of the USA, before coming here, was based on episodes of How I Met Your Mother). I’ve met more people in the last year than I had throughout my entire life before I moved here. I love how possible things seem to be here and just being at the center of where all these exciting things happen really makes a difference. I find it truly fulfilling just having the capacity to believe.
What is your favorite part when working on a project? Do you trust your instincts or do you prefer to revise your ideas as you work on developing them?
I don’t think I have ever started a project fully knowing what I am looking to make, I also haven’t been doing this long enough to say that I know what I am doing. So I definitely depend on my instincts on this one.
It might be very specific, but my favorite part is when the audio starts to work with what I am portraying visually. Music was a big part of my childhood hence it’s very exciting when the rhythm matches up my visual worlds. It’s at that moment when I usually feel a bit more confident about my decisions. At the same time, it’s always a leap of faith trusting my instincts because I never know how things are going to end up looking like.
From Malaysia to Savannah, GA. How are you enjoying this journey?
I definitely wouldn’t have imagined myself here two years ago. I come from a rugged little island called Borneo. I’d like to think that it’s also a little island that floats on the expansive ocean inside of me so I get to take it wherever I go.
America is amazing and also very different from how it is portrayed on television. (It’s probably safe to admit my entire knowledge of the USA, before coming here, was based on episodes of How I Met Your Mother). I’ve met more people in the last year than I had throughout my entire life before I moved here. I love how possible things seem to be here and just being at the center of where all these exciting things happen really makes a difference. I find it truly fulfilling just having the capacity to believe.
What is your favorite part when working on a project? Do you trust your instincts or do you prefer to revise your ideas as you work on developing them?
I don’t think I have ever started a project fully knowing what I am looking to make, I also haven’t been doing this long enough to say that I know what I am doing. So I definitely depend on my instincts on this one.
It might be very specific, but my favorite part is when the audio starts to work with what I am portraying visually. Music was a big part of my childhood hence it’s very exciting when the rhythm matches up my visual worlds. It’s at that moment when I usually feel a bit more confident about my decisions. At the same time, it’s always a leap of faith trusting my instincts because I never know how things are going to end up looking like.
How important is it collaborating with other artists, writers, musicians, visual artists?
If there is anything I’ve learnt from this field is that there is only so much you can do on your own. And that’s why I ask for help all the time. I’m decent at drawing, but I’m not the best storyteller, or composer, and I’m no after effects guru. Thank goodness I have friends! Better things always come out when working together and it’s usually an awesome experience when you respect each other’s work. Once I worked with a poet, whose work I really admire. She lives very far away, but when she replied to me saying she was excited about seeing her poetry turned into an animation it was a great moment for me.
Is your work impacted by what you experience in daily life?
Sometimes I have a hard time removing my personal feelings from my work because I am an emotional creature (thank you Eve Ensler). Recently, I have decided that I’m just going to roll with it. I come from an upbringing where expressing a lot of emotion is not always the best thing to do, and that’s why a lot of it gets translated into the things I make instead. I’ve grown quite a bit as a person this year and I’ve been trying to translate my experiences into my work a little bit more. My latest projects are definitely about experimenting with that. I can’t express myself very well in words, but I can control how I take my experiences and bring them back out into the world. It’s the most amazing thing when I hear from other people who share those same feelings.
Who is the female character in your short animation Santubong and who does she represent?
This might take a little storytelling. In my hometown, I live near a huge mountain called Santubong, and it has been in the background for the majority of my life. The story of Santubong comes from local folklore. It is the story of two immortal women named Santubong and Sejinjang who fought over a mortal man. The fight resulted in Sejinjang getting her head smashed into a million pieces, which became the islands around Borneo. To this day, the mountain’s silhouette resembles that of a woman’s head, and the woman in the short film is her.
Last summer, I spent quite a bit of time in the rainforests, and I learned that the mountain represented a long-lasting challenge for me. I saw it as a journey where you either let it overwhelm you or you choose to keep moving and ascending. To keep moving is something that I tell myself when things get challenging, and the short film “Santubong” was a personal expression of that feeling.
What are your upcoming projects?
As of now, I’ve been working on a little monologue "Two Selves" on my experiences this summer. It’s centered around this wonderful little notion of the two versions of yourself, the long term and the short term self. I came across this idea from a Humans of New York post with a picture of girl who was reflecting on the idea that if you only focus on who you are in a short term context, your long term self will slowly decay, which is who you truly are.
Don’t people look at the world in the most amazing ways? I’m so glad social media exists so I can live vicariously through the minds of other people I would otherwise be too shy to talk to. I hope that doesn’t sound creepy.