Mula Pala-Pala Mula Art Exhibition
WTC 3 Lobby, 3 March – 30 May 2025What does it mean to nurture?
To tend with patience, to shape with care, to bring forth without force but with quiet persistence. It is the faith of the gardener watering unseen roots, the reverence of the craftsman refining a single line.
This ethos is also embodied in the exhibition title MULA PALA-PALA MULA, drawn from Old Sanskrit, Mūla Pāla (The Roots as Guardians) suggests that strengthened foundations become enduring guides, while Pāla Mūla (Guardian of the Roots) speaks to the act of nurturing, ensuring wisdom’s vitality across generations. This cyclical dynamic aligns with enduring pedagogical traditions, where education is not merely transmitted but continuously shaped, a living continuum of inheritance and offering.
Yayasan Sekolah Seni Tubaba (Tubaba Art School) was established—not just as an institution, but as a philosophy. Art became a medium of empathy, a tool to instill the fundamental belief that all human beings stand equal. Through arts, the students in the art school learned to navigate emotions, understand diversity, and build bridges rather than walls. The children who arrive at the school come by different paths—some stepping directly from school, others slipping through the rigid structures of formal education, and some who have long left the classroom, shaped instead by fieldwork and labor.
Art, in this space, is not merely an object to be made; it is a language through which futures are inclusive, imagined, reclaimed, and set free.
