Carving

Ukiran

Ukiran is Tantri Mustika’s carved work in stoneware. Into vessels, lamps and wall pieces she cuts flowers and flames, and sometimes a figure from Balinese folklore. The word is Indonesian for carving, and can also mean sculpture or inscription.

How it started

The first carved pieces were for Everyone’s heard of a dragon, a 2023 group show at Craft Victoria about fantasy and making. Tantri took it as a chance to look at her Balinese heritage, and made the Rangda vase. Carving was unlike anything she had made before, and she was surprised to find she was good at it. It also made sense: carving runs all through Balinese art and craft.

“I just fell so deep into this work, I felt like I had unlocked something.”
Tantri Mustika

Ukiran works by Tantri Mustika for Everyone’s heard of a dragon, 2023 — Everyone’s heard of a dragon, Craft Victoria, 2023

Carving, with the shavings still on the bench, in Tantri Mustika’s studio — Carving, with the shavings still on the bench

How the pieces are made

Each piece is hand-built in stoneware and carved by hand. Much of the learning has been about timing: which stage of the carving happens at which point as the clay dries, and which tools suit each stage. Some pieces stay plain, matte white clay. In others she works marbled clay into the carving, which ties them back to her earlier work. Many are finished with gold lustre.

Where the carving comes from

Bali is Tantri’s second home. Carving, weaving, batik and brickwork were around her long before she thought of them as influences; Ukiran is where she began looking at them deliberately.

“The work is a tool I’m using to rediscover myself. The more I lean into it, the more I see.”
Tantri Mustika

Carved flowers, Blooming, Ukiran, by Tantri Mustika — Carved flowers, Blooming

Ukiran wall plaque, umber marble with daisies, by Tantri Mustika — Ukiran wall plaque, umber marble with daisies

The flowers

The flowers are drawn from her imagination, and characters from Balinese folklore turn up too, like Rangda, the demon queen. Flowers keep returning because, as she puts it, they feel both special and cyclical. She sees the same cycles of growth, loss and renewal in people. Over the years they have grown into the darker, more mystical Balinese florals in her work now.

“What began as a recurring motif has become part of a larger study of self and of what it means to be alive.”
Tantri Mustika

Ukiran now

Carving is the newest of the four techniques Tantri works with. After the Rangda vase came Rambut, a tall white vessel that takes its cue from the wild, serpentine hair of Rangda, and the Life Cycle Vessel, built around the idea that every ending carries the possibility of a new beginning. Then the carving moved into light with the Ukiran table lamp, where gold lustre details pick up the glow from the shade, and onto the wall with the Ukiran Bunga pieces (bunga means flower).

Some pieces are carving alone. More often now the carving cuts into marbled or checkered clay, the material she has worked with since her terrazzo days.

As featured in Broadsheet, 2024