Balaa by Sjafril
Explore Mondoir Studio
Medium: Acrylic on Canvas
Dimensions: 60 x 80 cm
Year: 2023
Price: $2200.00 USD
Status: available
BALAA is part of an ongoing inquiry into spiritual displacement, collective memory, and the silent burdens we carry. Painted in acrylic on canvas, it depicts a hovering red cloth, part carpet, part veil, marked by a suspended stone over a desolate landscape. The work navigates weight and levitation, ritual and ruin. Emerging from reflections on the duality of tradition and trauma, the cloth evokes sacredness while remaining untethered. The stone suggests both burden and remembrance. Bold reds against turquoise skies intensify the tension between sacred aesthetics and raw psychological terrain. As with much of my work, BALAA invites inward reflection, offering a visual prayer, a stillness where spiritual ambiguity can be acknowledged without shame.
Why collect this work?
A red, carpet-like form hovers between turquoise sky and barren ground, while a grey mass appears to pull its lower edge downward. This opposition makes suspension feel provisional rather than miraculous, holding weight and levitation in unresolved tension.
- Sjafril describes a practice joining figurative symbols with contemplation and social reflection. Here, that approach is concentrated in three spare elements: cloth, stone, and landscape, without fixing them to a single narrative.
- In the photograph, the cloth’s patterned border suggests an object of ceremony or domestic use, yet its bent outline resists a stable rectangle. The artist identifies the form as part carpet and part veil, and the stone as burden and remembrance.
- The documented acrylic medium permits sharp contrasts alongside brushed, partially blended passages. Dense red establishes the central form, while turquoise remains visible through the loosely worked surroundings, separating object from setting.
- Encountering this 2023 painting allows spiritual displacement to be considered through a precise visual contradiction: a culturally suggestive textile is conspicuous yet untethered, suspended above land it cannot settle upon.
About the Artist
Sjafril
Sjafril is an artist on Mondoir Studio. Artistic discipline: painting. Based in KABUPATEN PASURUAN, ID.
Nationality: Indonesian
My practice is rooted in silence and contemplation, using figurative and symbolic imagery to explore inner life and social reflection.
