Becoming-woman is a perpetual process rather than static and absolute. Becoming-woman has nothing to do with a person's pattern of growth and development in a linear manner. Becoming-woman is not about the point where it starts or ends, but rather emerges in the middle of a process.

Soping San Laura is a quasi-fiction exploration of Riskya Duavania in collaboration with Mimzy about the process of becoming woman from the perspective of a transwoman. This series of works uses the interpretation of the idea “Becoming” by Deleuze and Guattari, about the concept of Becoming-woman that’s outside of a woman's genetic body. On the other hand, becoming-woman relates to the situation of the body undergoing a creative process and finding new functions.

Soping San Laura is a fictional world that was built on the imagination of Pasar Loak Soping, a shopping district for secondhand collection located in the center of Salatiga City, Indonesia. Riskya and Mimzy make a storytelling about the transformation process using the objects of secondhand items collected by Cik San. Cik San, a transwoman who also sells there, will display her wares and become the main subject in Soping San Laura. Through the medium of television, Cik San will narrate her story on her quest to find her gender identity in door-to-door series where she perceived her body only as a mode of production, then in Soping Mursida when her body went through the process of “becoming-woman”, and lastly where she found the borderline of living in two realms namely Laura (in Javanese, Lanang ora Wedok Ora, meaning not male, not female) in Becoming-Imperceptible.

Soping San Laura was exhibited for the first time at Taman Budaya Yogyakarta in July 2021 as the final result of the Asana Bina Seni education program organized by the Yayasan Biennale Yogyakarta. Due to the ongoing global pandemic, Soping San Laura is currently closed but remains running via website. Through this website, Soping San Laura attempts to explore the flea market experience though it will not be able to convey the same feeling as with firsthand experience. On the contrary, this site can be a reflection for the audience while “casting a spell” for a more inclusive world and wishing for the pandemic to get better.

It’s time to delve!

Mimzy (They/She) is a Trans Non Binary who currently works in the creative media field, particularly in processing graphics. Previously, she worked as an in-house content creative designer for a clothing brand in Yogyakarta. Besides working, Mimzy fills her free time by participating in street library activities, discussions, and painting as a form of self-actualization. In early 2020, her "Aksara" zine became the initial project to compose and design a zine for the street library collective in Taman Suropati, Jakarta. The Zine Aksara contains a combination of writings and images drawn from the concerns of street library comrades, as well as several archives of people's direct action activities to help the people face the crisis.

Her passion for drawing fanart and fiddling with graphic media on computers since elementary school has brought her to the work of graphic design as her creative process. This year, as a collaborative artist, with Riskya Duavania she will present “Soping San Laura” which tells the story of Cik San and Mimzy's sisterhood experiences at the flea market. Cik San, through a collection of used goods, produces creative creations as a transwoman in the community. The images and actualizations in this series of works contain hope for a more inclusive world, especially for transwomen.

Riskya Duavania (She/they) is a film student who loves to work with documentary approaches for her artistic practices. She has always been interested in the collection of objects as a medium to explore a broader context of an issue, such as collective memory and the gender identity phenomenon. New media is her platform for advocacy and form of expression to articulate the issues.

Collective memories regarding the momentum of “Rejecting Omnibus Law: Job's Creation Law” protest where the post-protest remaining wastes on the street and the audio-visual documentation were thus being archived in “The Imminent Commonplace” (in collaboration with Carkultera Wage Sae). Riskya is a part of Forum Film Dokumenter, a non profit organization focused on festival and film distribution in Indonesia.