INDONESIA'S MATURING ART

Giving Indonesia another perspective              

            

Kartika Affandi claims she’s ugly.  She was also raised to be truthful.  

Let’s settle the conundrum.

To push her point she adds make-up and fractures another taboo. Instead of masking womanly mysteries by preening in private, she steers her wheelchair into the open, opens her box of tricks and faces her fans.

The voyeurs seek more than rouge, red chili ear danglers and an upturned clown mouth.  Deceptions or pointers?

They strive to catch character on canvas and the best succeed with wild swirls of color and shades of darkness.  Their model has got to that certain age where she no longer cares a damn what anyone thinks.  Or maybe it’s always been that way.

There’s no brashness, nothing unkind.  Her eccentricity is benign.  It’s not a gimmick, though it might be a shield against past pains:  “I’m doing this not to look beautiful, although I enjoy people looking at me,” she said. “I want to get rid of bad spirits, to help us all enjoy life.”

The Yogyakarta painter and sculptor turned 85 in November; it’s clear she’s been boisterously independent for all eight decades.

When her famous father Affandi told the only child from his first marriage with artist Maryati:   ‘What a pity you’re my daughter’ she could have sulked at best or become a psychotic mess.  Instead she replied:  “I’m glad I’m a woman, though I know it’s easier to be a man in Indonesia.  And that’s wrong.  I want equality.”

Does she get angry?  “Sometimes.  Then I walk away. Or paint.  Move on.  There’s no place for hate.”   

Yet some of her self portraits look so tortured they could be used in campaigns against domestic violence.  In life she’s frothy female, laughing to offset the feminist messages that make insecure men fold their legs.

Affandi erased his disappointment and set about teaching his tough little girl to be original and “never tell lies; don’t just see, but feel.”  Kartika squeezed her first paint tube when she was seven and has since exhibited in Europe, South America, the US and Australia where she painted with Aboriginal women in the central desert town of Alice Springs.

“I want to be outdoors, among people where they live,” she said.  “I’ve worked in Amsterdam’s red light district and a mental hospital.  I went to Aceh to be with the survivors.  Art is therapy.”  All good – but in Indonesia tall poppies need the scythe.

With portrait by Zam (psychologist Dr Azam Bachtiar)

Professor Astri Wright, a Canadian Art Historian has written that Kartika ‘paid with social ostracisation and sexist reviews for presuming to become a modern artist … (and) for painting too much like her father’.

In The Jakarta Post author Julia Suryakusuma described Kartika as ‘an antidote to state ibu-ism (state motherhood), the New Order militaristic, feudal Javanese social construction of womanhood whereby women were defined as appendages to their husbands’.

Despite her colorful past – or maybe because of it - Kartika reluctantly acknowledged she’s better celebrated outside her homeland.  A biography in English by Dutch poet Barney Agerbeek is scheduled for November 2020.  The documentary Kartika: 9 Ways of Seeing by Christopher Basile, an American in Australia, was released in 2018.  She said it has yet to be shown in Indonesia.

The girl from Jakarta soon kicked the dust of orthodox Java off her sandals.  By 18 she was a pregnant student in London with her older artist lover Saptohoedojo.  She’d already studied in India on a government scholarship for exceptional children, but knew little about making babies.

The couple couldn’t find a mosque so used a registry office.  Eight children and 20 years later they divorced after battling Islamic authorities claiming they weren’t married. 

“I was fed up with his polygamy,” she said. “A partnership can only hold together if there’s trust and honesty.  The rest is bullshit.”

A second union with Austrian Gerhard Koberl came and went.  She ponders proposing to her older Australian academic “boyfriend” who lives in Melbourne.  Although they’ve known each other for 55 years “that’s not the same as living together.  I don’t want another divorce. Maybe I’m difficult.”

If so there was no annoyance on show as she held court for four hours in the garden of Malang artist and author Bambang Adrian Wenzel. A dozen painters and sketchers gripped brushes to capture more than a “mish mash” of her complex personality.

Two of the more successful in “getting to see what I think” were Azam Bachtiar and Sadikin Pard.  Their tangled lines forming a whole, abstract other world image let the viewer peer behind the paint.

Pard (left) is one of the nation’s leading mouth and foot painters, and has just opened a gallery in the East Java city. 

Kartika also has one in Yogyakarta honoring her father who died in 1990. The New York Times called him ‘Indonesia's foremost Expressionist painter … whose works were exhibited worldwide’.  Apart from being an artist he also supported first president Soekarno – and for this he and his family’s movements were restricted for six weeks in 1948 by the Dutch.

“The Soekarno years were the golden era of Indonesian art,” she said.  “He appreciated my father’s work.  He was a good man but his main fault was polygamy.    Under Soeharto the military was worshipped more than humanity. 

“So many Indonesians don’t go to galleries because they feel shame.  That’s so sad.  We need art education is schools so children can appreciate the importance of culture and expressing the imagination.”

Kartika said she spent 40 years as a Buddhist “but now I really don’t know about religion ... I just want to be a good person and be honest to myself. I accept gays and lesbians – everyone.  I try to encourage women to show their creativity.  Art helps us live better, to have spirit.”

How should her obituary read?  “I gave Indonesia another perspective of the quality of life.”

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Pix by Erlinawati Graham

First published in The Jakarta Post 28 December 2019

KAKO MOZES - OUT OF THE SHADOW

The Peaceful Painter   

                                 

The difficulties faced by children with famous parents are so universal there should be a special word to describe the situation.

Like ‘offspringomitis’ (an inflammation of problems encountered when Dad or Mom is in the public eye).  It fits, but doesn’t have the right ring. Maybe schitzoneed – the condition of wanting, yet not wanting.

When the kid is young the benefits flow, particularly if the parent is financially successful and generous to his or her family. Later the name can become burdensome.

Koko Mozes knows the symptoms well.  As the eldest son of renowned East Javanese painter Mozes Misdy he was always the little-noticed lad giving his father a hand stretching canvases, packing cases, squeezing tubes and generally keeping just out of frame.

Sometimes he ventured an opinion.  Sometimes it was heard.

It was good apprenticeship because the boy was artistically talented.  He wanted to learn and Dad was happy to teach, but the danger was obvious; whatever the youngster did it would always be compared with the art of the elder.

So for five years Koko worked as a photographer doing portraits, weddings and other commercial work.  “I didn’t find this satisfying because photos are just a flat memory, not something that incites a reaction,” he said.

“So I turned back to art. I’ve learned so much from my father.  We both work in oils. Now I have to make my own name.”

Having recently secured a commission to produce 300 original paintings to hang in restaurants and hotels in China, (the buyer saw his work in Surabaya) Koko is already achieving his goal, though he still helps his father prepare for exhibitions.  The next is scheduled for Jakarta later this year, where Mozes senior is now working. .

But quantity doesn’t always equal quality, as his mother Fatimah reminded him. “He still needs maturity,” she said – and he agreed as a dutiful son should when his Mom sits in at an interview, pointing out that her husband has an international reputation, having exhibited in Australia, Thailand and Malaysia.

“Little by little,” Koko conceded, for some of his work is still dominated by Dad’s powerful brushwork.

Mozes’ small pictures start from US $800 (Rp 10 million). Now most buyers are Chinese, an indicator of where disposable incomes are currently centered along with (according to Koko) Indonesian indifference to art.

Much of Dad’s work isn’t just large, it’s wide-screen cinematic.  Pairs of canvases, each up to four meters long are part of his speciality, designed to dominate a hall.  It’s the sort of art loved by big business to hang in foyers and boardrooms, to make a statement about the company that has little to do with the product.

A picture of packets of paper clips or sacks of cement hardly enchants, but a panorama of beached boats or flowers can be restful and, according to Fatimah, assist in the negotiations.  It’s all about mood, though money is the motivator.

And the rupiahs have certainly been running.  Twelve years ago Mozes senior opened a lavish three-storey gallery hung with his awards, in Banyuwangi.  This is the little town on the far east coast, better known as a ferry port for travellers heading in or out of Java, not a location to linger.

“When the gallery opened there were about 220 artists working and living here,” Koko said. “It was the high point and we had a thriving cultural community. Now there are only 20 left.  They’ve scattered around Indonesia but most have gone to Bali.”

For that’s where the tourists head – 1.8 million in the past year – and not all are after the beaches and booze. Art is also a major attraction, with trends as fickle as food fads.  A few years ago it was cats, then birds and fish. Demure maidens in batik seem perennial.

It’s a market Koko doesn’t want to enter.  “I’ll stay in Banyuwangi and develop my own style, and make buyers happy,” he said. 

“I want to be known as a peaceful painter, focusing on the environment, helping people understand what we’ve done – and what we are doing – to nature.”

For this he’s well placed.  The region is heavily timbered, and not all of it plantations.  There are two national parks - Baluran to the north and Alas Purwo on the peninsula of Blambangan.  This is the name used when the Majapahit kingdom ruled more than 500 years ago.

The Kawah Ijen volcano with its spectacular smoking sulphur-lake caldera is nearby.  It’s a favored spot for adventurous Europeans, but there’s no integration of the experience with local art and culture. This annoys Koko who argues that the local government should follow Yogyakarta’s example and promote Banyuwangi culture.  

Although the area is drier than Central Java and in places looks more arid Australian than lush Indonesian, Koko prefers darker, less tropical greens that give his work a slight feel of mystery.  His father favors pastels.

“I try to use my imagination rather than focus on a particular location,” he said.  “I’m particularly concerned about damage to the environment. I like to think how the land looked before we started felling trees and building towns, before global warming.

“When I do put a man-made structure, like a cottage, into the landscape, it’s usually rotting and crumbling as nature recovers the space.”

By contrast his father often includes figures in his landscapes, usually relaxing after work, along with portraits of women, clothed and nude.

“My Indonesian hero is the late expressionist Affandi, and overseas, Van Gogh,” he said. “Even though I don’t want to live in the shadow of my father, it’s a good shadow to have.

“At the same time I don’t want people to look at my paintings and say –‘Ah, that’s Pak Mozes’.  I hope they’ll say: ‘Look, a Pak Koko painting’.

“My father will be 72 this year yet he’s still seeking perfection. That’s also my aim, and I’m only 40.”

(First published in The Jakarta Post, 23 September 2013)

        

NUGROHO WIJAYATMO

Buy local – before it goes global       

                       

Next time you’re shopping for something to cover plaster blisters on the wall consider contemporary Indonesian art.

Prints of stallions pounding through the surf (much beloved by a certain class of businessman) and the inevitable pale-skinned nymphs cheerfully harvesting rice under a furnace sun may be risk-free choices because they’re everywhere.

To really stand out take a look at where the young palettes are pointing.

Like Nugroho Wijayatmo, whose powerful and enigmatic portraits of women’s faces will attract more attention than any clichéd picture of a pool of colorful koi.

Diligently enquiry is needed to find his work.  Try Singapore, then Taiwan, even Europe.  If that’s too difficult, seek a simple furniture-free house down a gang on the outskirts of Yogya, narrower than a cab.

Not that many try because few know where he lives and works, or, sadly, care.

”Indonesians find it difficult to interpret paintings,” Nugroho said.  “Overseas it’s easier to value and appreciate art.  One reason is because it’s not a topic taught in our schools.

“I’ve had few exhibitions in Indonesia, though one in Jakarta next year is being planned.  There are so many good artists here (in Yogya) but they are not getting the publicity.  My agents are all overseas.”

Originally from Bengkulu in Sumatra, Nugroho’s early life mirrored that of so many creative young people battling common perceptions that archipelagic artists may not starve in garrets, but they’re likely to go hungry in a bamboo shack.

His mother taught Indonesian, his father was a public servant; their son didn’t want to his Dad into uniformed oblivion or become a lawyer or doctor.  Status and money were not the issue.

“I just wanted to draw,” he said.  “So did my father who used to copy images from diorama of Indonesian revolutionaries defeating Dutch colonialists.  I was more interested in features, emotions and character.”

In 1999, aged 19 and alone, he moved to Yogya with a bag full of his self-taught art.  It took only two examinations of the lad and his portfolio by the admissions committee of the prestigious Institut Seni Indonesia (ISI) (Indonesian Institute of Fine Arts) to be convinced the man had the spark that might ignite. 

Most candidates undergo five tough trials to test their worth.

“At that time it was very difficult to get into ISI,” he said. “My work was mainly still life and sketches.  In class I was inspired by my teacher, Edi Sunaryo. 

“I  discovered artists like Salavor Dali (the surrealist Spanish artist) and the poetry of Chairil Anwar.”  A large portrait of Dali by Nugroho has just been sold to a Singapore couple where it dominates their flat.

Anwar was a prominent and prolific writer of Generation 1945.  His work stressed individualism and was often bleak. 

Yet these influences aren’t apparent in Nugroho’s work where inquiry trumps anger.  It’s exploratory and analytical, inviting rather than confronting, more like the work of another unlikely hero -  the 19^th Century Pre-Raphaelite English painter of wistful women, John William Waterhouse.  He also featured large canvases.

Nugroho is friendly, low key – and cautious.  For the past two years he’s been a full-time professional artist earning serious money abroad but asked that figures not be quoted for fear of arousing jealousy.  A recent Taiwan auction would have helped pay for his motorbike and much of a new house. 

He got into the overseas galleries through introductions from another accomplished Yogya portraitist with a realistic pop-art style,  Dani ‘King’ Heriyanto.

But Singapore agent Watson Tan, who handles the work of both men, warned that the market was tough and crowded  and “only the fittest will survive.”

“Some artists are too demanding with prices even when they are young,” he said. “They need collectors to start their careers. Collectors or art agents these days are not naive about pricing.”  To tell it straight, greed kills.

Nugroho’s  only social comment was to deplore the anti-pornography laws which he claimed are curbing creativity.

The more significant impact on his style came from Sunaryo, a hard- edge painter and teacher at ISI, this year (2012) awarded a doctorate for his contribution and scholarship. His art has been widely sold overseas, though Nugroho’s work has yet to venture into the abstract world of his teacher.

“There are two types of artist,” said Nugroho.  “Those who copy and those who use their imagination.   I can copy, but I’m not very good.  Sometimes I use a model, other times not.  The inspiration can come from anywhere.”

Although unmarried he seems to understand some of the complex emotional inter-twinings of intimate relations.

“I like to paint the faces of women, they show so many conflicting moods,” he said.  “Her face may be sad but her heart happy.  It’s very complicated.  The  emotions of men  can be read more clearly.

“I sketch the original idea on the floor (he has no easel), then start to fill in with acrylic and water, layer by layer, sometimes up to seven, and then at times finishing in oil.  I think my technique is unique.”

In his village studio he’s still struggling to get two three-square meter canvases just right.  Both are of strong women, perhaps in their 30s whose faces seem to tell stories of experience and regret, yet tinged with remembered happiness.

A veil of horizontal lines, as though raining in one portrait, and a light horizontal mesh of twigs on the other, adds impact.  There’s sex aplenty, but not the sort that would arouse fundamentalists more concerned with body parts than soul.

“I want my work to be realistic, but decorative,” he said. “I’m still developing.  I fear getting stagnant if I stick to one technique.  I want the viewer to experience the emotion.”

Commented Watson Tan: “I do see Nugroho as a young emerging young artist on the Indonesian contemporary art scene.  I would love to see his work having deeper emotions which Nugroho will develop throughout the years.” (First published in The Jakarta Post 15 January 2013)

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ONO GAF - WELDED TO HIS ART

Malang’s Man of Iron

Not all foreign words that migrate into Indonesian stay intact. Sosialisasi now means community education, while unfollow demonstrates logic, if not authenticity.

Now consider artis, a word that has morphed into anybody with celebrity status, whether their talent is barren or fertile.

This story is about a real artist, and will hopefully restore some luster to the term. The title has credibility beyond a journalist’s observation; for Malang sculptor and painter Sumarsono will get official recognition for a lifetime in the creative arts.

His award, from Malang mayor Peni Suparto, follows a nomination from the Malang Arts Council. Peer recognition is a rare accolade, particularly in a profession awash with risks, loneliness, jealousy and self doubts,

If Sumarsono, 65, better known as Ono Gaf has ever fought these demons during his long career, they don’t show. His wife Tristianingsih Kenevel reckons he’s not radically different from when they first met forty years ago. A little less electric perhaps, for age drains the watts- but still vibrant.

A photo taken at an early exhibition shows a hippy in a black cloak painted as a skeleton. Now he favors Elton John glasses, beads, a badged cap like a much-traveled Rotarian, sarongs and sleeveless shirts.

When courting he revealed to his potential bride that he was already bound to a fickle and demanding mistress he’d met while still in primary school. He encountered her while lurking around Malang’s tramways and back street foundries, seduced by the sounds and smells of metal being reworked.

The transformation, the energy let free, the potential to create anew! Where others just saw old iron, Ono imagined fresh shapes and ideas ready to be born. He became the midwife.

Getting married to a man trying to express himself through an affair with steel would test anyone’s mettle. The family fortunes would fluctuate, for there’d be no divorce from his first love, even though she might drive the couple and their three children, into penury.

If success is measured by a black Mercedes in the driveway of a cool hill-town villa then Ono is still on the steaming floodplains riding his pushbike. If ranked by the number of his works in collections around the world and the teenage pleasure he still gets from art, then the man should be named in the Forbes Rich List.

His latest works, exhibited with 11 other invited sculptors from across the nation at the International Cultural Center in nearby Batu, include Pembunuh Osama (the killer of Osama bin Laden), a bizarre mix of metals creating a Sci-fi monster of an American soldier, and Miss Indonesia.

This work will never arouse the interests of an anti-pornography task force. It features a round faced Medusa with a tangled torso representing the strength of Indonesian women. It’s an object of power, not beauty and lust.

Ono’s father was a tailor, his mother sold noodles and his eight siblings had interests other than art. Mum was also an embroiderer and recognized her son had design abilities worth encouraging, including great skills with the pencil and a natural feel for perspective

Not so Dad. A religious orthodox he forbade drawing or making anything that might be considered the likeness of a living creature. Although Ono broke the prohibition long ago he still paints abstracts.

“We lived in a kampong alongside a mosque,” Ono recalled. “Everyone was Muslim. It was a sterile and restrictive environment. I built a tiny studio in the attic and kept out of the way.

“When I wasn’t there I was round the tram yards watching men work iron. I knew most Indonesian artists like to use wood, but timber rots and breaks. Iron and steel lasts. Then and now I’ve been the only one working like this.

“I learned how to forge and weld. I could communicate with metal. However people laughed at my iron work – they didn’t think it was art.”

One who disagreed was a Dutch doctor who saw the creativity others missed. He paid ten times the prices asked by Ono to encourage the young man to enlarge his mind.

This meant being exposed to European classical music and pictures. Fortunately Malang, an academic city, is rich with second-hand bookshops. Other times he listened to Radio Australia on short-wave

“I couldn’t afford to travel, but I could see the world through books,” he said. “I knew I had to learn. Books can’t make you rich but they can make you clever. Artists need to be intellectuals. Only then can art be great.”

Then Ono discovered a useful fact of Indonesian life. Contacts count. The doctor worked for the police, then run by the army. Regimented officers who wanted to tip-toe on the wild side without risking reputation were drawn to the unkempt but affable artist, willing to fulfill their fantasies in steel and concrete.

These commissions usually involved Soviet-style statues of bayonet-thrusting, grenade throwing heroes. They weren’t Ono’s idea of art, but they paid for him to build the weird iron figures he loved to create.

Through exhibitions (he’s had 11) he met foreign collectors who, he reluctantly admitted, appreciated his work more than locals.

The couple lives in a tiny kampong, this time behind a Protestant church. The area’s so cramped people duck when neighbors open shutters. No signs, so only dedicated art-enthusiasts know his whereabouts.

Every flat space of his six square meter front room carries towers of photos, catalogues, clippings, knick-knacks and books, including five volumes of Michelangelo’s works.

“I believe in art and I believe in myself,” he said when pushed. “The life of an artist is up and down. I’ve never sought profit. Sometimes I give works away because I know I get blessings in return.

“Looking back I feel satisfied with what I’ve done, but I’m still learning. As an artist I should be honest and holy, not arrogant. To be creative is to be spiritual, to work hard and concentrate on God.”

(First published in The Jakarta Post 2 April 2012)

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NZ ARTIST EMBRACES ISLAM, INDONESIA

Indonesian influence in Kiwi art © Duncan Graham 2008

In 2001 an ageing wanderer was on his way back to New Zealand. He’d been following a band around Europe and found himself with time to spare in Singapore.

Neville McPherson thought he’d pop across and have a quick look at Indonesia; nothing serious, maybe pick up a souvenir or two, just in and out. Other travelers had spoken warmly about the country, and not just in climatic terms. Like many Kiwis McPherson knew next to nothing about the archipelagic republic hidden on the far side of big, protective Australia. Why not take a peep?

The moment he exited the airbridge at Soekarno-Hatta the reserved teacher from a dusty rural town north of Wellington was tumbled into a totally new and troubling world, quite unlike anything he’d ever experienced.

“I thought Jakarta was a cowboy town, just full on,” he said. “The reckless behavior on the roads, the lack of discipline, the overcrowding and the way people took their lives in their hands was too much.

“I couldn’t cope with the place for more than two days so headed out of the city. It was still overwhelming, but the hill towns were a bit more manageable. I arrived in Bogor and it was there that I fell in love with the country.” Indeed he did, even to the point of becoming a Muslim after long talks with the locals in backpacking hostels.

Back in NZ he hit 60 and decided there were other things to do in life apart from pushing formulae and equations to fidgeting kids. As a young man he’d had yearnings to be an artist and had studied art at teachers’ college. But that was no way to go if he wanted to keep a loaf in the larder and maintain his family. So he buried his ambitions behind the blackboard and bided his time.

He’d done a few big timber sculptures using a chainsaw, including public commissions, but wanted to refine and minimalize his work. The first taste of Indonesia offered inspiration, but how to access the mysteries?

McPherson applied for a job teaching English in Medan, didn’t like the “characterless town” so after six months moved to Pekanbaru, the cleaner 17th century capital of Riau Province.

He stayed for 18 months and took time to tour Bali and other cultural centers, “not to work but to soak it all in”. In Yogya he discovered batik and is currently toying with ideas on incorporating designs popular for printing cloth in the cap batik style that uses metal stamps dipped in waxes.

Now McPherson is back in his homeland and has just held his first exhibition in central Wellington of woodwork and woodcuts where he tries to blend Maori, Western and Islamic images. His newfound faith, which he follows diligently with regular visits to the city’s only mosque, has constrained his artistic expression.

“As a Muslim I can draw abstracts and plants, but I’m not supposed to portray
humans or animals,” he said. “That’s been difficult and I’ve cheated a bit. When
it comes to judgment day maybe I’ll be sent to hell.” This last line was
delivered with a chuckle. His other failing is a reluctance to spread the faith,
as required in Islam.

“I was a bit of a wedding-and-wake Christian before I converted. Like most Kiwis I have a relaxed view of religion. I don’t want to bother others about faith, but maybe I’m making amends through my Islamic ideas and helping people get a better understanding.”

But if he is, the images are subtle indeed. McPherson admits he’s still experimenting with form rather than design, pushing boundaries. He’s planning a bigger work with an inscription from the Koran in Arabic across a hint of NZ’s dramatic landscapes and the curly and curvy symbols found in Maori culture.

McPherson says he has no Maori heritage though he does have Maori cousins.
The traditional designs, also found in Polynesia, include fishhooks, circles, fern fronds and dolphins – causing more problems for an artist following Islam. Some of the patterns share similarities with the calligraphy of Arabic.

Wellington is a city of half a million people with around 3,000 Muslims. McPherson said only five Westerners are regulars at the mosque. There are about 3000 Indonesians in the country with maybe ten per cent in the capital; many are Christian or Buddhist. McPherson hinted at problems with his family accepting his change of beliefs, but no difficulties from others.

In NZ culture, faith is personal and private. It’s considered impolite to ask a person’s religion. There are no identity cards. Although founded as a Christian country and mainly Protestant, recent surveys show the nation is becoming more secular.

Although seen as a curio in Indonesia, McPherson said he was treated with friendship and tolerance. He had problems in only one mosque where a woman lifted the curtain dividing the sexes to gawk at the white-bearded newcomer. She then alerted others that the bule (Westerner) was not praying in the right way, much to his embarrassment. “I didn’t go back to that mosque,” he added dryly.

“Islam is an accepting faith,” McPherson said. “I like the communal life and values. Christianity can be quite judgmental, setting up lots of targets, aspiring to affluence and one-upmanship.”

McPherson says Islam is “gentle” – an opinion quite at odds with much of the Western media where the attitudes and actions of the fundamentalists have hard set the image in a concrete of prejudice. The 61 year old doesn’t see it that way because it hasn’t been his experience.

“I hope that in the future I’ll be able to exhibit in a mosque,” he said. “I like to think that my art will help enlighten people about Islam. I want to return to Indonesia and look again at the tiles and decorations of the mosques for inspiration – and to learn more.”

(First published in The Jakarta Post, 14 May 2008)

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ARIE TULUS

Recovering missionary-suppressed art © 2007 Duncan Graham

Tomohon isn’t a place you’d normally bracket with the internationally known arts centers like Ubud in Bali and Yogyakarta in Central Java.

That could change if poet and painter Arie Tulus succeeds in his campaign to put the North Sulawesi hill town on the Indonesian cultural map.

Sulut (Sulawesi Utara, North Sulawesi) is already well established as the Republic’s most Christian province through its status as a missionary hive.

It has also been dubbed the ‘city of flowers’ though that’s nothing special. There are many garden centers throughout the archipelago, usually just outside the bigger lowland cities and at the higher altitudes that favor floriculture and horticulture.

Tomohon is pretty in a haphazard way, though not for its slab-concrete and toilet-tile architecture that’s elbowing aside the lovely old traditional two-storey timber houses. The charm comes from the flower sellers that line the main road from the capital Manado, 45 minutes drive distant.

A few overseas tourists, mainly backpackers attracted by diving on the reefs off the nearby islands occasionally detour to the cool hills. But apart from some historic sites including caves built during the Japanese occupation to store ammunition, peak-and-lake scenery that’s easy on the eyes, and the chance to hike without sharing the track with thousands, there’s little to keep visitors.

“We used to have a rich artistic heritage,” said Arie. “You can see this expressed in carvings on the ancient above-ground stone tombs known as waruga. (The images on these sarcophagi are unique, showing jolly, saucer-eyed faces and frock-coated figures.)

“However much of this was lost when the Dutch banned burials in waruga because they feared the spread of disease. The missionary influence was powerful and suppressed our pre-Christian animist culture.”

The Minahasa and other tribal groups in North Sulawesi are unusual because in the early 19th century the people made a wholesale switch from animism to Christianity, primarily Protestantism.

This gained them job and education benefits from the colonists, but it didn’t make them popular with the Muslim Javanese. Soldiers from Manado condemned as ‘Dutch dogs’ were used to put down dissent in the Java War that started in 1825.

After independence there were ill-fated bids to go it alone that resulted in the Indonesian air force bombing Manado in 1958, but if there are any remnants of separatism left they are well hidden. Now the bid is to promote a local identity within the current political structure.

“The character of the Minahasa people is open to all,” said Arie. “We are tolerant and friendly, and although we want to see the renaissance of our art we are not closed to outsiders, though we don’t want to see Bali-style development.

“So if Indonesian or European artists want to come here and work, well that’s fine. We are trying to develop the Mawale (home-coming) Art Community that will reflect this land and its people and inspire others. I have no real fear that newcomers will change the quiet character of this place.”

Arie, 45, is a multi-skilled craftsman, as artists must be to survive in Indonesia where patrons are few and governments great with supportive rhetoric though not with rupiah. “I paint because I enjoy it,” he said. “I don’t do it to make a living.”

He was educated in the local Christian schools, then studied art at the Manado teachers’ college under the late Johny Rondonuwu who used the waruga motifs in his work. Arie later took a degree in management and now teaches art at the University of Manado.

Just up the road and across a fast-running stream is the Pniel church where a large and busy mural created by Arie above the timber-framed altar draws parishioners’ eyes during dull sermons. It shows Jesus in a landscape of Old Testament scenes, including a guilty couple making a dash from the Garden of Eden.

In the maze of his little studio in the farming village of Kakaskasen, close to the home of his parents, Arie has been preparing a set of seven life-size statues. These were commissioned by the relatives of a local family wiped out in the Flight 574 Adam Air crash of 1 January this year.

All stand in formal black and white Western wedding dress, the spooky figures staring blankly at the goose-bumped onlooker. When there’s no work underway Arie wisely shrouds the statues’ faces lest they unnerve visitors.

Then comes the contrast: In the front room are stark, simple-line semi-abstract nudes that might well offend conservatives elsewhere. Arie claims no problems – maybe because he’s a well-regarded local known for his faith, or because Sulut is more tolerant.

Round the corner are shrill acrylic landscapes in the style of the European impressionists, some stacked by the walls, others tacked to the ceiling, for this man is prolific and painting himself out of space. The troubled Dutch expressionist Vincent Van Gogh is one of Arie’s art heroes, along with the American splash-and-smear abstractionist Jackson Pollock.

Elsewhere are large collections of miniatures he’s done of village life; bullock carts rocking and rumbling over the potholed roads, kids reluctantly dragging themselves to school, dancers rehearsing. Five books of poetry, all illustrated. Love is a constant theme.

Arie’s self portraits are mildly schizophrenic. Some show an unkempt Salvador Dali-like wildman, others a neat monkish figure praying (or wringing his hands) over a Bible, titled Prayer for Indonesia. Coming to terms with an intolerant Christianity that tried to eliminate art considered pagan takes some intellectual gymnastics.

With a group of like-minded friends he started the Mawale Art Community this year. The MAC publishes prose and poetry, and runs readings and workshops on Minahasa art, culture, music and history. Some members’ work is on the Web at www.sastra-minahasa.blogspot.com

About 200 meters beyond his studio rise the foothills of smoldering Mount Lokon, its green slopes giving no hint of the rumblings within this active, 1580 meter-high volcano. It’s another source of inspiration in a hugely rich and little exploited environment.

“We should never try to limit ourselves in our expression,” Arie said. “My hope is that the influence of Tomohon can help lift other artists to express themselves.

(First published in The Jakarta Post 5 Nov 07)

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DJONI BASRI

Sculpting questions about human rights © Duncan Graham 2007

In most Indonesian cities the principal crossroads are graced (or disgraced if you like) by statues in the style known as Soviet Realism.

These show muscle men snapping their manacles, thrusting forward, determined to engage with some enemy. They are valiant, determined, aggressive and always triumphant.

There’s a not-so-jolly quartet of giants in beanstalk green just down the road from sculptor Djoni Basri’s home in Malang, East Java: A soldier, farmer, student and Muslim cleric stand tall, arms linked. Their concrete features confront the future six meters above the fume-filled intersection where limping beggars tap windscreens. It’s an unsubtle reminder to the masses below revving at the red lights that they too must strive in harmony to develop and prosper.

This is the sort of propaganda sculpture Djoni despises, though he also makes groups. One of his latest has a life-sized cluster of adults standing around, aimless. A child plays in the foreground; a dog sniffs one man’s trousers. A couple of women (rare in public art) look nonplussed.

“They are like politicians,” Djoni said. “They’re elected to lead, but they don’t know what to do other than argue. They’re supposed to help the poor, but they do nothing - though they want others to think that they’re doing something.”

It’s called Para Pecundang (The Losers) and you can see it and other works of this passionate man early next month (Nov) at a solo exhibition at the Galeri Cipta II in Central Jakarta.

All are of people. Djoni is a flexible artist who can create soft finger-size babies in hardwood and Styrofoam though to big fellows in bronze. The most notable in this metal is a larger-than-life statue he made of first president Soekarno for a North Sumatra commission. Like all true artists he’s never fully satisfied with his work, though in this case the disappointments are more acute.

The current trend seems to deify the revolutionary and much art shows little resemblance to photographs of the man. Djoni wanted the features to reveal the real Soekarno, the womanizer and economic fumbler along with his qualities as an intellectual and charismatic leader.

But others who had a say in the job sought to downplay these leveling human traits in favor of the look of the mesmerizing orator chosen by destiny. Inevitably the result is a compromise.

In his publicity photos Djoni strikes the authorized up-you pose of the wild Indonesian artist, unkempt beard, street-cred cap, sucking a fag to show he couldn’t care a damn.

Up close in a neat suburban house shared with his government veterinary surgeon wife Herliantien and university student son he looks tamer, more like a public servant on leave, though that impression is rapidly cut away once he starts talking.

“What’s my message?” he asked, whacking his right fist into his left hand. “Human rights, human rights, human rights!” When he gets animated he chisels into his sentences, showering chips of consonants as though language is timber to be tamed.

“All my work is a form of protest at what is happening all around. I want to show the reality of life, the poor who have been ignored or forgotten. I want people who see my art to think about what’s happening and ask – ‘what can we do?’

“Consider the plight of maids sent to countries where they are exploited and abused. We export our young women – what nation can be proud of that? When I look at what’s going on I feel despair because I know it wasn’t supposed to have been like this.”

This makes him sound like one of those creaking figures in the new democratic Indonesia - an unreconstructed Soekarnoist who now feels free to bemoan Soeharto’s demolition of his predecessor’s social engineering: “I’m a universalist, not a nationalist,” he proclaimed. “Nationalism solves nothing.”

One of ten children born in Surabaya Djoni took off for Yogyakarta as soon as he could fend for himself. It wasn’t a question of his parents having other plans for their talented son – life was too much of a struggle to be worried about career paths.

Once in the heart of Javanese culture Djoni knew he’d discovered the right place: “It was a rich environment both on and off campus,” he said. “I learned how to express myself, socially and in art. I was like a fish that’s found water.”

The place to swim and frolic was the Yogyakarta Art Institute. At that time it was the pre-eminent art school in the nation, attracting the best and brightest.

After studying sculpture idealism yielded to the pragmatic need for income. He worked for TV station SCTV where he eventually became art director doing everything from set design to the finished glitzy, garish facades used in this make-believe world.

Djoni doesn’t need to verbally chainsaw that period of his life before he turned full time professional artist, his feast or famine income supplemented by teaching computer graphics. He says it all in a little sculpture showing a small girl pulling her reluctant infant sibling away from a TV set. It’s titled Television to be Telepoison.

Potential buyers beware. His work doesn’t come cheaply and he’s as reluctant to put price tags on his works as he is to put labels on his style. One of the dirtiest words in his lexicon is ‘commercialism.’

“My art hero is Rodin (late 19th century French realist sculptor Auguste Rodin),” he said. “If you have to call me anything I’d accept being an impressionist.

“I have to work fast because the ideas come quickly and can go just as easily. I have to follow what God points out to me. It’s like a calling. I do what I want to do. It’s up to others to judge my work. I just want my family to be proud of me and my work.

“I draw my ideas from my observations of daily life, my experiences and the culture of East Java.

“I’m still looking for the right beliefs in God, the right tools and the right knowledge. I want to stimulate thinking. Art is the only way to touch people. Is it wrong to be an idealist?”

(First published in The Jakarta Post 15 October 07)

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