Im A Ghost In My Own House Analysis

Understanding Melati Suryodarmo’s “ I’m a Ghost in My Own House”

“I’m a Ghost in My Own House” was a performance art made by Melati Suryadarmo, wherein she crushed and grinded hundreds of kilograms of charcoal briquettes on a grinding table for twelve hours, in the middle of the exhibition hall of Lawangwangi Arts and Creative Space in Indonesia.

The term “ghost” was defined by Merriam dictionary as a disembodied soul of a dead person that is believed to appear to the living in bodily likeness, while “house” refers to a structure or a building in which a family lives. According to the artist’s statement, “I’m a Ghost in My Own House” was a poetic transformation of the feeling that a person physically exist yet the inner self remains haunted by the constant loss of the meaning of home.

A house is a permanent structure while a home may or may not be a house, but it is a place that has an emotional significance to the person who stays or lives in it. There should be a strong emotional, personal connection for the person to “feel at home”, so when a person does not feel safe, belonged, comfortable, and happy enough to stay and live in it then

Other than the function of the material was destroyed, the performance itself symbolized the issue of the artist that would mean irrelevant and waste of time if viewed in the notional way of thinking. From the Imagination and Reality of Jeanette Winterson, Melati’s performance was “against this golden calf in the wilderness where all come to buy and sell, the honest currency of art offers quite a different rate of exchange”, she did not turned her time to earn money and fulfil her needs as a notional thinker during that day but as “the artist turns time into energy, time into intensity, time into vision.” She continued even though it was an exhausting performance for it was her artistic