Sleman, 11 September 2026 — Students of the Master’s Study Program in Performing Arts and Visual Arts Studies (PSPSR), Graduate School, Universitas Gadjah Mada, together with members of the Turi community, organized the “Niti Bumi Cyanotype Visual Arts Workshop“. The activity was part of a series of Community Service Program (Pengabdian kepada Masyarakat/PKM) initiatives under the big theme “Niti Bumi: Bodies That Spell, Land That Remembers, and Landscapes That Grow”. The program positions Turi as a living landscape that preserves traces of civilization, collective memory, and the community’s cultural cycles.
The workshop was facilitated by Vincentius Ola Lamapaha, an artist, photographer, and researcher who is active in Yogyakarta’s contemporary creative arts scene. The activity brought together Turi residents from different generations and PSPSR UGM students, creating a shared learning space where artistic practice, everyday community experience, and interpretations of the local environment and history could intersect.
During the workshop, participants were introduced to and invited to experiment with the ‘cyanotype’ technique, an image-making process that uses light-sensitive materials. In the process, objects and materials selected by participants were placed on prepared surfaces and then exposed to light to create visual traces. Light was treated not merely as a technical element, but as part of the artistic process that records the form, shadow, and presence of an object.
Together with the facilitator, participants learned how light can leave traces and form images on a surface. Although the process is relatively simple, it allows each work to produce a different result. The shape and placement of objects, the intensity of light, and the exposure process itself generate visual compositions that cannot always be fully predicted. These small surprises became an important part of the creative experience.
The workshop was also closely connected to the previous activity, the Walking Tour “Tracing Turi’s Past“. While the walking tour invited participants to move through space and reread buildings, cemeteries, water sources, and various historical traces of Turi, the cyanotype workshop translated those experiences of reading space into a process of visual creation. In this way, traces previously encountered through walking, observation, and storytelling could be reworked through the medium of visual art.
This approach is in line with the concept of the Visual Arts Workshop within the Niti Bumi program, which places artistic creation as a form of visualizing spatial memory. In the Pengabdian Kepada Masyarakat (PKM) program, visual works are developed through visual mapping and the creation of artistic archives rooted in the materiality of the hamlet. The practice of reresik is also understood as more than a physical activity; it becomes an aesthetic practice of ‘sweeping away’ layers of history in order to revisit the community’s shared origins.
Within this context, materials from the Turi environment do not merely function as objects for producing visual forms. Leaves, plants, everyday objects, and other materials connected to the community’s living environment can serve as carriers of stories. When incorporated into the cyanotype process, these materials leave traces that open up new possibilities for understanding the relationships among objects, places, memory, and people.
The involvement of Turi residents from different generations was an important aspect of the creative process. The workshop was not positioned as a space where artists or students simply taught techniques to the community, but rather as a participatory process. This approach reflects the spirit of the Niti Bumi program, which places the creation of narratives, aesthetics, and artistic direction in the experiences and memories of the Turi community, while facilitators serve as methodological initiators and supporters of the creative process.
Through Niti Bumi Cyanotype, visual arts practice became a medium for bringing together light, material, body, space, and memory. Each work produced was not merely the result of a visual experiment, but could also be read as a trace of each participant’s experience of the environment they inhabit and move through
Ultimately, the Niti Bumi Cyanotype Visual Arts Workshop demonstrated that the memory of a place does not always need to be preserved only through writing or formal historical documentation. Memory can also be present through form, shadow, material, color, and creative processes. From a simple process, light leaves a trace; from that trace, different stories emerge. Art thus becomes a space for seeing Turi again—not as a static landscape, but as land that continues to remember and grow together with its community.
These contributions demonstrate that the Niti Bumi Cyanotype Visual Arts Workshop was not only a space for artistic experimentation, but also part of a broader process of education, preservation of cultural memory, creative engagement with materials, and strengthened collaboration between the community and academic and artistic circles.
The activity also contributes to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly:
- SDG 4 (Quality Education): through experiential learning that brings together community members, students, and artists in creative practice. The cyanotype workshop serves as a space for knowledge exchange on visual arts techniques while also encouraging reflection on local history, environment, and memory.
- SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities): particularly through efforts to strengthen awareness of cultural heritage, spatial memory, and the local identity of the Turi community. This activity is aligned with the spirit of Niti Bumi, which places landscapes, cemeteries, everyday artifacts, and community living spaces as part of a cultural archive that needs to be cared for and reinterpreted.
- SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production): through the use of materials from the surrounding environment and everyday objects as part of the artistic creation process. This approach encourages participants to reconsider the value of materials that are closely connected to daily life and to creatively rework them through artistic practice.
- SDG 17 (Partnerships for the Goals): through collaboration among the university, artists, students, and intergenerational community members in processes of creation, learning, and strengthening local knowledge. The Niti Bumi program itself positions facilitators as methodological initiators, while narratives and artistic directions remain grounded in the experiences and memories of the Turi Hamlet community. (BBAP)
