Abednego Trianto, Portrait of Kartini with her husband Raden Adipati Djojoadiningrat, regent of Rembang, her face and hands cut out of the photo and pasted on a transcribed letter, 2015, inkjet print on archival paper, 22.5 x 15 cm (image), 28.5 x 21 cm (sheet), Leiden University Libraries, inv.nr. Or. 28.368.
Trianto examined a number of Javanese studio portraits from the KITLV photo collection in the Leiden University Libraries and concluded that the manner of posing and describing was strongly role-affirming. According to Trianto, the absence of the women's name within the context of a studio portrait indicates that the identity of the woman was not important enough to mention. Trianto edits the photographs by cutting out the women's distinctive faces and hands, in some cases also their feet, making the man literally stand next to an unknown woman.
Among these historical studio portraits, however, there is an exception: the name of Raden Adjeng Kartini was mentioned. Trianto studied Kartini's letters and decided to transcribe them onto the back of the studio portraits. He then reassembled the cut-out faces, hands and feet within the transcribed letters. The artworks in this series always consist of a front and back of a studio portrait manipulated in this way: on the one hand, the studio portrait with the literally absent (identity of the) woman depicted, next to it her face and hands mounted in a transcribed letter by Kartini. In the series acquired by the Leiden University Libraries, recto and verso are shown side by side in one frame.
Through Trianto's intervention, making use of Kartini’s powerful words, the anonymously portrayed women are placed, as it were, in a more emancipated context.