Girls gotta do what girls do?

This touring interactive performance, inspired by Tanya Villanueva/Artschoolnow Salon, is a research-driven engagement with local audiences on gender, queerness, labor, and migration. In each city, collaborators offer services tied to their interests, while Sarnt exchanges love letter writing service. For the Bali edition of the salon, it features a live manicure making service by Plum (Indonesia), as she shares personal stories as queer immigrant there, a sensorial experience, of meditative non-sexual sensuality by Gula Malacca (Indonesia), and (paid) love letter writing service by Sarnt Utamachote.

Conceived by Sarnt Utamachote, inspired by Tanya Villanueva/collective Artschoolnow Salon
Performed by: Sarnt Utamachote, Plum, Gula Malacca

COLLABORATOR'S BIOGRAPHY

Plum
is a nail artist whose work transforms tiny surfaces into imaginative, kawaii inspired universes. Using markers, colored pencils, and a playful illustration style, she blends manicure artistry with the charm of handmade drawings. Her pieces often feature bright characters, soft colors, and childlike whimsy, capturing the joy of simple, tender moments. As a trans woman, Plum’s creative practice is also an expression of self-affirmation and gentle rebellion. She approaches nail art as a personal canvas where identity, softness, and creativity meet. Through her miniature artworks, she invites viewers to appreciate beauty in its most intimate scale and to embrace the delight found in everyday cuteness.

Gula Malacca
Born in Indonesia of Peranakan Chinese descent, Gula Malacca is a Transnational performing artist, somatic ritualist, and pleasure worker. Their playground is located in the intersection between the sacred and the strange - a place where kink, ritual, performance, art and embodiment practices meet in the center of big feelings. A multidimensional artist with diverse cultural background, their work is informed by their hybrid identities, ancestral hauntings, and diaspora dreams. The beating rhythm of their heart sings the cyclical dance of leaving and coming back home to their untethered spirit - uprooting and rerooting, nurturing the art of belonging as a queer kinky multiracial South East Asian living within the paradox of the East, West, Human, Monster, Alien, Ghost, and Beyond.