REACHING FOR THE STARS WITH FEET OF CLAY © Duncan Graham 2007
Few who've climbed to the top of the pile remember their origins. Once fame and fortune arrive it's farewell to their lowly past, according to East Java potter Ponimin.
"The grassroots people get crushed by the political and social system," he said. "Most aren't smart enough. They get tricked by those who are more ambitious.
"The poor also want to succeed, to have materialist goods, but they get trampled. The few who do reach the summit discover it's an illusion and what they hoped to find isn't there. They like to claim they're clever and strong, but in fact they're just victims of the social environment."
But how to express such ideas? Ponimin is an easy-going man who laughs a lot and talks more, particularly about art. You won't find him wearing a headband and shouting into a megaphone at a street protest – though his passions may be just as strong.
He doesn't have a good way with words, – particularly when trying to reach foreigners as he's discovered when lecturing overseas. His skills are in his hands where the language of clay crosses all barriers.
He was chosen as the only Indonesian artist to be represented at the third Asna Clay Triennial held by the Arts Council of Pakistan late last year. His work – according to local press reports – 'mesmerized' visitors and was the center of attraction, competing with sculptures and artifacts from nine other countries.
Reach of No Hope is the artist's title for his work, a large installation that needs plenty of space. It shows dozens of small plump figures clawing their way up ropes and ladders on a pyramid made of sticks.
It's a work that's gone through several changes. Earlier versions shown in Surabaya were titled Climbing on Empty Expectation Stairs.
The structure can be seen in many ways. The symbol of the pyramid is widely used in graphic representations of society – a few at the top and many at the bottom.
It also looks like a scaffold, an instrument of torture.
Those who get to the top crawl like flies across the ceiling, unable to go further. Others tumble to the floor. Some are shattered. It's a metaphor that transcends cultures. The extra quality is the expression on the faces of the figurines.
For the little people are cherubic, jolly wee terracotta urchins, nothing like the grotesque and greedy caricatures normally used to represent the avaricious and ambitious. This is no allegorical work, so the observer is bemused.
"I think their behavior is funny, that's why I make them look happy," he said. "I'm disgusted by the actions of our politicians and leaders since Reformation – but what can we do? We're powerless. As Javanese we tend to accept the situation. So maybe it's better just to laugh."
Ponimin's work has already been shown in Bangladesh and Japan, supported by the Indonesian government through the department of tourism. He hopes that next year it will be displayed in India.
Being an artist with a message is difficult in Indonesia where there are few arts grants. Ponimin, 40, originally from Jombang in East Java, studied at the school of fine arts in Yogya where he worked in most media but eventually settled with clay.
A grandfather had been a potter making kitchenware, but the old man died before young Ponimin could learn the techniques, so he came late to clay.
Jombang is in the heart of terracotta country. The mighty Majapahit Empire flourished 700 years ago in the fertile lowlands fed by the Brantas River. The land was so rich that life wasn't one long struggle to survive.
There was time to develop culture, fight wars, expand trade and create art. The dark riverbank clays were so easy to handle that the people used them to make bricks, tiles, pottery and figurines. Surviving examples give the best clues to how the people of that era lived.
Ponimin loves the local clays' plasticity and the way they hold their shape. They contain little grit. He doesn't have a wheel, preferring the coil system where cords of rolled clay are built into shape using the fingers to smooth and pinch.
"This allows for more creativity," he said. "A wheel makes for uniformity."
Although his studio in the hillltown of Batu looks like a production line with scores of black figures drying in the sun and waiting to be fired in an open oven, every piece is individual.
This is the work he has to do to keep the rupiah flowing. "It's my industrial art," he explained. "Only when I've done enough can I get involved in my fine art. I want to extend the images and ideas that I've been showing overseas but there are no sponsors for this sort of work."
However there have been plenty willing to pay serious money to Ponimin provided he follows their designs, not his.
The clients are housing developers and recreation park investors whose ideas of art come not from the ancient culture that they've inherited and which surrounds them, but from European history books.
Ponimin has had to make statues of dinosaurs, Roman gladiators, Egyptian pharaohs, chariots, figures from Greek mythology, armless Venus de Milo look-alikes, unlimited galloping stallions and even the Sydney Opera House.
These are used to give 'quality' to the tropical urban landscape. Don't worry about the potholes and open drains; a fine figure in a toga nursing a cornucopia keeps the mind off the mundane.
Or maybe they're just a sly way to put statues of semi-clothed maidens around gateways and on median strips. If they featured bare-breasted Javanese virgins there might be an outcry from self-appointed moral guardians, while anything that looks Caucasian and classical is acceptable.
Ponimin is aware of the incongruities and tries to fight them. He teaches art at the Malang State University and pushes his students to look at the local culture and landscape for inspiration.
But they also know what sells. So in the shadow of Mount Kawi, a mountain rich in magic, they're busy molding sway-back Balinese beauties with mask faces, just big enough to fit into a traveler's bag.
"I never think about selling my fine art," Ponimin said. "This what I want to do to express myself. I plan a new installation that reverses the pyramid and has grains of rice trickling down to the people who suffer from all the weight above them."
No doubt they'll still look like happy hobgoblins rather than the gaunt downtrodden masses that normally feature in the art of social protest.
(First published in The Weekender magazine (JP), September 2007)
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FAITH IN INDONESIA
The shape of the world a generation from now will be influenced far more by how we communicate the values of our society to others than by military or diplomatic superiority. William Fulbright, 1964
Showing posts with label Art.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Art.. Show all posts
Monday, September 03, 2007
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
IKAT IN INDONESIA
THE UNITED COLORS OF INDONESIA © Duncan Graham 2007
The range is vast. The designs are intriguing and enigmatic, deceptively plain and cunningly complex, mysterious and multicolored; some are smoldering, earthy and raw, others are jolly, bright and glossy, enhanced by threads of gold and silver.
Just like Indonesia.
The symbols of other countries tend to be landmarks; the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, the Sydney Opera House. Not all are human constructions. Canada has the maple leaf and Lebanon the green cedar, but only Indonesia has ikat.
This is the textile made from pre-dyed threads woven to ancient patterns remembered and passed down through the generations. Like Scottish tartans each one belongs to a specific community.
That exclusivity is waning for the Koreans, Japanese and Chinese are already producing cloth using precious Indonesian motifs that no one in the Republic has bothered to register.
So consumer beware; you may think you're buying hand-made craftwork from a hillside hamlet in the hinterlands of Java where gnarled fingers lovingly teased thread into loom. But the chances are growing that your purchase came from a computer-controlled production line mill in smog-filled Shanghai.
Along with the characters of the wayang kulit puppets there are probably no other symbols or patterns that so clearly belong to the archipelago as the designs of Indonesian textiles.
Weaving is believed to have originated in Egypt. The technique moved to India and China through trade. It probably arrived here from Vietnam about 3,000 years ago, along with the secrets of wet-rice cultivation.
At first the products were crude. Necessarily so because the materials used were bark and fronds. When cotton became commonplace the techniques could be refined.
Then ikat – and to a lesser extent batik - spread. There are now at least 6,000 distinctively different designs across the 17,000 islands, ranging from the abstract to the realistic, and no one person would know all.
However art and design lecturer Arma Subijanto from Jakarta's Trisakti University proved herself adept at identifying most when challenged by The Jakarta Post.
Confronted with a sea of sarongs, shawls and accessories draped on tables and sideboards for an exhibition at Malang's Tugu Hotel, she was able to accurately pick the provenance of almost all without peeping at the labels.
"I feel passionately about ikat and the designs that we've developed over the centuries," she said. "In the pre-Islamic era when animism was common women used to pray to the gods as they made the cloth. So they saw the inspiration for the designs as sacred.
"This is our heritage, our culture, our contact with our ancestors. Ikat unifies the nation. But sadly it's seen by many as old fashioned.
"The history of many textiles and designs are related to royalty so could only be worn at special events or by particular people, like pregnant women. Even today batik tends to be reserved for formal occasions, though former president Soeharto made it mandatory for public servants to wear batik on Fridays.
"That may have helped the clothing industry but it was just a gesture. It did nothing to help understand the culture. The challenge is to make it relevant to the present."
How anyone could think traditional Javanese wear frumpy is beyond this furtive fashion observer. Because sarongs haven't been cut to fit they tend to emphasize the bottom, an effect enhanced by high heels.
They also hobble, making steps shorter and movements more pronounced and provocative, as every woman knows well. No need to look at slinky Western gear where brevity rules – Javanese costumes hide almost everything, but they reveal much more to the imagination.
Even if you're not prepared to wear Indonesian textiles they make brilliant wall-hangings, bed and cushion covers, tablecloths and curtains.
By Western standards the cost of hand-made products is low. Even in up-market shops outside Jakarta a splendid sarong can still be bought for less than Rp 180,000 (US $20) meaning the lady at the loom would probably get only a quarter of that amount. Machine-made textiles can be bought for even less.
As she opened and folded the lovely linens Arma identified flawed labels. A textile from Lombok may have been bought there but the design was from much further east on the island of Timor.
She can also tell in a flash whether the dyes used are natural and made from plants and earths, or chemicals. (Hint: Natural dyes tend to have a matt finish.)
Arma said factories in industrial towns like Gresik (East Java) are making textiles using motifs from Sumbawa then being sent to West Java for sale.
Patterns that appear to be abstract and minimalist are often symbols of people and natural objects that – like Chinese calligraphy – have been reduced to an outline. Other designs from East Nusa Tenggara are more naturalistic, showing deer and horses.
A few have lettering, a style introduced during the Dutch era. Chinese and Indian influences can also be found in ikat from Sumatra. Designs from the Toraja in Sulawesi show their distinctive high-roof houses. Only in Flores is the designer also the weaver; in other regions the tasks are separate.
One way to preserve the designs and textiles is to use them in modern clothes, and not confine them to sarongs and kebaya (tight-fitting blouses) only to be used at weddings. That's already being done by Malang's Rien Bambang Guritno, a textile collector who promotes Indonesian designs through displays like the one at the Tugu Hotel.
She's using ancient patterns on casual wear together with semi-formal outfits that any smart woman would be happy to wear in public.
"So many people are trying to forget the past," Rien said. "We have a culturally rich country. Our crafts unite us. We should be teaching these to our children during their school holidays, not just let them do nothing.
"There's a view that Indonesian textiles are heavy, hot and difficult to maintain. That's not correct. Many are lightweight.
"Malang is known as an educational town. (It has more than 30 universities). I also want it to be internationally recognized as a city of culture.
"I've found in my travels abroad that there's more interest in Indonesian textiles overseas than in this country."
Her friend, Jakarta-based interior designer Sri Sapti who has spent many years in Europe agreed. "There are books about ikat, but they're not easy to find," she said. One of the sources she carries is an out-of-print text in English, more than 20 years old.
"The message we want to put overseas is that Indonesia is much more than Bali."
(Sidebar)
WEAVING THROUGH THE ARCHIPELAGO
Ikat has many meanings including influence, association and bonding. Here it's the term for textiles where the threads have been dyed before being woven.
Double ikat has the threads dyed on both the warp (the long threads on the loom) and the weft (the shorter threads that cross the warp).
Batik is created by applying lines of molten wax to cloth. The wax cools and then resists the dyes. When the cloth dries the wax is boiled off but the dyes remain in the unprotected areas.
Songket refers to the inclusion of silver and gold threads. Originally reserved for royalty, these textiles are now popular in Bali.
The National Gallery of Australia claims to have one of the 'richest public collections of Indonesian textiles in the world' with more than 1,200 items. Many examples are on the Internet. Check www.nga.gov.au
First published in The Jakarta Post 8 May 07)
##
">Link
The range is vast. The designs are intriguing and enigmatic, deceptively plain and cunningly complex, mysterious and multicolored; some are smoldering, earthy and raw, others are jolly, bright and glossy, enhanced by threads of gold and silver.
Just like Indonesia.
The symbols of other countries tend to be landmarks; the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, the Sydney Opera House. Not all are human constructions. Canada has the maple leaf and Lebanon the green cedar, but only Indonesia has ikat.
This is the textile made from pre-dyed threads woven to ancient patterns remembered and passed down through the generations. Like Scottish tartans each one belongs to a specific community.
That exclusivity is waning for the Koreans, Japanese and Chinese are already producing cloth using precious Indonesian motifs that no one in the Republic has bothered to register.
So consumer beware; you may think you're buying hand-made craftwork from a hillside hamlet in the hinterlands of Java where gnarled fingers lovingly teased thread into loom. But the chances are growing that your purchase came from a computer-controlled production line mill in smog-filled Shanghai.
Along with the characters of the wayang kulit puppets there are probably no other symbols or patterns that so clearly belong to the archipelago as the designs of Indonesian textiles.
Weaving is believed to have originated in Egypt. The technique moved to India and China through trade. It probably arrived here from Vietnam about 3,000 years ago, along with the secrets of wet-rice cultivation.
At first the products were crude. Necessarily so because the materials used were bark and fronds. When cotton became commonplace the techniques could be refined.
Then ikat – and to a lesser extent batik - spread. There are now at least 6,000 distinctively different designs across the 17,000 islands, ranging from the abstract to the realistic, and no one person would know all.
However art and design lecturer Arma Subijanto from Jakarta's Trisakti University proved herself adept at identifying most when challenged by The Jakarta Post.
Confronted with a sea of sarongs, shawls and accessories draped on tables and sideboards for an exhibition at Malang's Tugu Hotel, she was able to accurately pick the provenance of almost all without peeping at the labels.
"I feel passionately about ikat and the designs that we've developed over the centuries," she said. "In the pre-Islamic era when animism was common women used to pray to the gods as they made the cloth. So they saw the inspiration for the designs as sacred.
"This is our heritage, our culture, our contact with our ancestors. Ikat unifies the nation. But sadly it's seen by many as old fashioned.
"The history of many textiles and designs are related to royalty so could only be worn at special events or by particular people, like pregnant women. Even today batik tends to be reserved for formal occasions, though former president Soeharto made it mandatory for public servants to wear batik on Fridays.
"That may have helped the clothing industry but it was just a gesture. It did nothing to help understand the culture. The challenge is to make it relevant to the present."
How anyone could think traditional Javanese wear frumpy is beyond this furtive fashion observer. Because sarongs haven't been cut to fit they tend to emphasize the bottom, an effect enhanced by high heels.
They also hobble, making steps shorter and movements more pronounced and provocative, as every woman knows well. No need to look at slinky Western gear where brevity rules – Javanese costumes hide almost everything, but they reveal much more to the imagination.
Even if you're not prepared to wear Indonesian textiles they make brilliant wall-hangings, bed and cushion covers, tablecloths and curtains.
By Western standards the cost of hand-made products is low. Even in up-market shops outside Jakarta a splendid sarong can still be bought for less than Rp 180,000 (US $20) meaning the lady at the loom would probably get only a quarter of that amount. Machine-made textiles can be bought for even less.
As she opened and folded the lovely linens Arma identified flawed labels. A textile from Lombok may have been bought there but the design was from much further east on the island of Timor.
She can also tell in a flash whether the dyes used are natural and made from plants and earths, or chemicals. (Hint: Natural dyes tend to have a matt finish.)
Arma said factories in industrial towns like Gresik (East Java) are making textiles using motifs from Sumbawa then being sent to West Java for sale.
Patterns that appear to be abstract and minimalist are often symbols of people and natural objects that – like Chinese calligraphy – have been reduced to an outline. Other designs from East Nusa Tenggara are more naturalistic, showing deer and horses.
A few have lettering, a style introduced during the Dutch era. Chinese and Indian influences can also be found in ikat from Sumatra. Designs from the Toraja in Sulawesi show their distinctive high-roof houses. Only in Flores is the designer also the weaver; in other regions the tasks are separate.
One way to preserve the designs and textiles is to use them in modern clothes, and not confine them to sarongs and kebaya (tight-fitting blouses) only to be used at weddings. That's already being done by Malang's Rien Bambang Guritno, a textile collector who promotes Indonesian designs through displays like the one at the Tugu Hotel.
She's using ancient patterns on casual wear together with semi-formal outfits that any smart woman would be happy to wear in public.
"So many people are trying to forget the past," Rien said. "We have a culturally rich country. Our crafts unite us. We should be teaching these to our children during their school holidays, not just let them do nothing.
"There's a view that Indonesian textiles are heavy, hot and difficult to maintain. That's not correct. Many are lightweight.
"Malang is known as an educational town. (It has more than 30 universities). I also want it to be internationally recognized as a city of culture.
"I've found in my travels abroad that there's more interest in Indonesian textiles overseas than in this country."
Her friend, Jakarta-based interior designer Sri Sapti who has spent many years in Europe agreed. "There are books about ikat, but they're not easy to find," she said. One of the sources she carries is an out-of-print text in English, more than 20 years old.
"The message we want to put overseas is that Indonesia is much more than Bali."
(Sidebar)
WEAVING THROUGH THE ARCHIPELAGO
Ikat has many meanings including influence, association and bonding. Here it's the term for textiles where the threads have been dyed before being woven.
Double ikat has the threads dyed on both the warp (the long threads on the loom) and the weft (the shorter threads that cross the warp).
Batik is created by applying lines of molten wax to cloth. The wax cools and then resists the dyes. When the cloth dries the wax is boiled off but the dyes remain in the unprotected areas.
Songket refers to the inclusion of silver and gold threads. Originally reserved for royalty, these textiles are now popular in Bali.
The National Gallery of Australia claims to have one of the 'richest public collections of Indonesian textiles in the world' with more than 1,200 items. Many examples are on the Internet. Check www.nga.gov.au
First published in The Jakarta Post 8 May 07)
##
">Link
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