Aikyam
(oneness)
Part of the series "The land of Hyangs" created during the Bali Art Residency 2025
Self-portrait photography
Amed Beach, 10 am
The Land of Hyangs — Series Description:
The Land of Hyangs is a self-portrait photography series created on the volcanic shores, forests, and riverbeds of Bali - landscapes long understood by local tradition as being alive with spirit. The Balinese concept of Hyang is an unseen, sacred presence: an ancestral force, a guardian of place, or a form of natural divinity. These works explore an intimate, physical conversation with that unseen world.
Across the three images, the human body becomes a site of devotion, surrender, and porousness. Rather than standing apart from the environment, the figure folds into stone, wood, and sky, dissolving boundaries between self and landscape.
Each photograph stages a state of transformation: a bending toward the earth, an opening to the heavens, a merging with weathered driftwood as though with an ancient spirit. Through gesture and vulnerability, the body becomes an instrument for sensing the numinous.
By using self-portraiture, the artist inhabits both subject and vessel, embodying the reciprocal relationship between people and the natural world that animism describes. The series reflects a reverence central to Balinese spiritual life: that the land is not merely scenery, but a living realm of presences with whom one is in constant dialogue.
The Land of Hyangs invites viewers into that dialogue, into a world where stone remembers, trees watch, and every element of the landscape carries its own quiet, powerful breath.
