The Sandals United

Produced while the artist was briefly in prison, The Sandals United, (2012), is part of a series that records the mundane objects of inmates' lives. Purbandono was granted permission to bring in a scanner and continue his art practice during his incarceration, creating surprising and poignant images that give us a different view of prison life, from paper swans folded out of torn magazine pages and ping pong balls reshaped by the force of heated of table tennis matches to well-worn knives snuck out from kitchens in the dead of night.

The Sandals United, (2012) presents 40 flip-flops owned by Purbandono's fellow prisoners. Each one bears the mark of its wearer: the hand-drawn brand logos, funny faces, and stylised texts are as much about indicating ownership as they are about individual creative expression. What these found objects ultimately reveal is the shared humanity, humour, and hope that remains even in the darkest of situations.