Cayung bridges cultural divisions<\/p>\n
Cynthia Webb, Contributor, New York City<\/p>\n
From a family in which a career in the arts was
\nfrowned upon, Cayung Siagian has found success in a land far from
\nhome, but he is still a North Sumatra boy at heart.<\/p>\n
Cayung Siagian is one of the huge number of Indonesians sharing
\ntheir rich cultural heritage with others around the planet.<\/p>\n
He sees himself as a spiritual being having a human
\nexperience, rather than the other way around, and when you look
\nat his artworks or read his poetry, you will agree this is a good
\ndescription.<\/p>\n
He was born in 1968 in Balige, a small town on the southern
\nshores of Lake Toba, North Sumatra, a Toba Batak and very proud
\nof it.<\/p>\n
He learned to read and write in the ancient Toba Batak
\nhieroglyphic script, which many of his peers today have not
\nbothered to do. He studied his rich cultural heritage with great
\nappreciation. Although he has now been away from Indonesia for
\nseven years, his Batak identity is just as strong within him --
\nperhaps even stronger now.<\/p>\n
Cayung (his given name is Richard) is one of seven children of
\na teacher and housewife. The siblings all attended university and
\npursued successful professional lives.<\/p>\n
Cayung laughingly said he was \"the black sheep\" of the family
\n-- the one with a strong artistic personality. He says that most
\nof his four brothers had better drawing skills than him, but did
\nnot pursue their artistic bent.<\/p>\n
Cayung's father envisaged a career as an accountant for him,
\nbut after a year he changed to tourism studies, something a
\nlittle more in keeping with his personality. He attempted for a
\nwhile to live according to the family ideals, working in the
\ntourism and entertainment world.<\/p>\n
Of course the \"inner artist\" could not be suppressed
\nindefinitely. While living and working in Bali, surrounded by art
\nand also foreign influences, Cayung made up his mind to live
\naccording to his truth. He left his steady job to become a full
\ntime artist. He moved to Ubud and began filling sketchbooks,
\nmaking paintings, and also writing poetry.<\/p>\n
He also has a strong and fine musical appreciation, and during
\nhis time in Bali, he came into contact with the trance-dance
\nmovement sweeping around the world at the time. Spreading from
\nGoa, India, full moon parties were held in Bali as well as other
\nlocations in Southeast Asia.<\/p>\n
The original concept was to dance all night in beautiful
\noutdoor locations chosen for their atmosphere. This, plus the
\nspecial rhythmic nature of the music, encourages a transcendental
\nstate to develop in the participants.<\/p>\n
The international nature of Goa Trance, the music and the free
\nwheeling energy of the participants banish parochial attitudes
\nand tastes. Barriers are broken down between people, and sharing
\nand love emerges. This freedom and multiculturalism appeals
\nstrongly to Cayung's wider worldview.<\/p>\n
During this time, Cayung's artistic work method was
\nincreasingly bypassing brushes and he was using his finger to
\napply paint, in an attempt to be more intimately connected --
\nliterally \"in touch\" with his work. As this self-taught artist
\ndeveloped his technical skills, ideas flowed and his subject
\nmatter became increasingly imaginative.<\/p>\n
In November 1997 he had a unique solo art exhibition, finger
\npainting for three days at a rather charming location in
\nJunjungan Village, close to Ubud. It was an area of palm trees
\namong the nearby rice paddies (is it just a coincidence that
\nJunjungan is also one of his own middle names?).<\/p>\n
Instead of exhibiting in a gallery, he gained the required
\npermission, and hung his works on the trunks of the palms. His
\ngallery was larger than most and appropriate considering his deep
\nreverence for nature.<\/p>\n
The following year, Cayung headed for New York, with rolled up
\ncanvases under one arm, to find his destiny in a place as
\ndifferent from Ubud as one could possibly imagine. For a man who
\nloves nature, the contrasting lifestyle forced upon him by life
\nin the Big Apple must have required big adjustments.<\/p>\n
He worked very hard at whatever he could find, and he found a
\nniche for himself, made friends and continued with his art and
\nwriting in his spare time.<\/p>\n
On New Year's Day 2000, he went to Broadway on a freezing
\nmorning, and marked the occasion by standing in the street making
\na finger painting.<\/p>\n
Destiny intervened the same year when he met his wife
\nJennifer, also an artist, at a life drawing session. Now they
\nlive in Brooklyn with their two poodles, and Cayung has a steady
\njob again as a graphic artist in a large health food store. He
\nworks in downtown Manhattan.<\/p>\n
He was at work on the fateful morning of Sept. 11, 2001, not
\ntoo far from the World Trade Center. As a world altering tragedy
\nwas occurring, he wrote in his e-mails to family and friends: \"So
\nfar, I am OK. The second tower has just collapsed\".<\/p>\n
This choice of words revealed how New Yorkers must have felt,
\nas they wondered what might happen next.<\/p>\n
He did not want to discuss the negative aspects of that day
\nexcept to say, \"Peoples' facial expressions are changed, perhaps
\nthis includes myself. But I would rather die dancing, than die in
\nfear\".<\/p>\n
However he added: \"The positive thing, from my point of view,
\nwas that most of the urban New Yorkers became close and cared
\nabout each other. We cared. We saw a long line of blood donors at
\nevery hospital, people of all different colors and origins... New
\nYork colors....like a new world of people who heard each other
\ncalling\".<\/p>\n
Cayung said that it took him a while to find the scene now
\nknown as PsyTrance, in New York.<\/p>\n
\"It is truly multicultural and everyone is equally accepted,
\nand it is a world free of falsity and consumerism. It's the only
\nplace where you can see an Indonesian and an Israeli hugging each
\nother and eating together from the same plate.<\/p>\n
\"The people have a third eye in their heart. They are open
\nminded people who love nature.\"<\/p>\n
He explained that PsyTrance was not the same as Rave, which is
\noften associated with \"kids who want to escape from parents and
\nmess themselves up with drugs\".<\/p>\n
For him, PsyTrance functions are very different, mostly drug
\nand alcohol free and attended largely by people who prefer not to
\nabuse their mind and body with chemical drugs or alcohol.<\/p>\n
He said he could leave his wallet on the table, go to the
\ndance floor and it would still be there, untouched, when he
\nreturned.<\/p>\n
Aligned with this PsyTrance world, Cayung's artistic
\nactivities have stretched to enormous proportions. He now paints
\n\"reflective UV Psy-art\". His canvases have expanded to mural
\nsize, sometimes around 8 meters x 3 meters, but averaging about 3
\nmeters x 1 and a half meters. He paints works of Visionary Art,
\nwith colors sensitive to UV light, which are used to decorate the
\nvenues where PsyTrance dance parties are held.<\/p>\n
The parties, which in tropical locations are held outdoors,
\nmust usually be held indoors in big cities in latitudes like New
\nYork where the summer is short.<\/p>\n
However, the New York area still has several three day\/three
\nnight dance parties each summer. He regrets the modern trend that
\nit is becoming increasingly difficult in many countries to
\norganize the parties to dance in \"Mother Nature\", due to
\nopposition from local business establishments.<\/p>\n
In New York, the flip side of this is that Cayung's art is
\nmuch in demand to decorate the indoor venues. His amazing
\npaintings are credited as \"Atmosphere\" on the PsyTrance website
\nadvertisements for upcoming parties.<\/p>\n
This year he has been invited to fly over to the West Coast
\ntwice, so that his works could adorn the walls at PsyTrance Dance
\nparties on the other side of the country. His fame is spreading.<\/p>\n
The style is psychedelic, transcendental and the subject
\nmatter is deeply spiritual, containing beings from other worlds
\nand images from nature. It also draws on his deep respect and
\nidentification with his Toba Batak heritage.<\/p>\n
He seems to have awakened a sort of ancestral memory since he
\narrived in New York. Along with motifs from Batak culture, art,
\nhistory and legend are other Asian motifs. One example is the
\ndragon painting, which is a beast as no one ever imagined.<\/p>\n
\"It's a magical dream that will always exist in the Asian mind
\n-- it will never be born and it will never die,\" said Cayung of
\nhis dragon.<\/p>\n
His ancestors' voices are also coming to him in the form of
\nvivid dreams which tell a story of a time long ago, concerning
\nChinese traders, Buddhist monks, ocean voyages to India,
\ndiscoveries of virgin islands and more.<\/p>\n
The dreams seem to tell the origins of the Batak tribes, whose
\nbeginnings are still somewhat mysterious and indefinite even to
\nmodern anthropologists. These dreams or visions have become a
\nbook in progress.<\/p>\n
According to Cayung, all of his art means nothing \"unless
\nthere are good and aware eyes to see it\", so in that sense he
\nfeels that all of his work is collaborative. For him, art is the
\nway to bridge the gaps created by the distance and diversity of
\nhumankind.<\/p>\n
\"Let's open and melt, mirroring each other, flowing back into
\nour natural beliefs, which have been forcibly pushed from our
\nbrains, leading us away from nature,\" he said. \"Let's link and
\nbecome one peaceful human family. We should rely on each other
\nthe same way that art needs our eyes and our eyes need art.\"<\/p>\n
I-BOX:<\/p>\n
Cayung's paintings are on the following websites:
\n* www.dayavision.50megs.com
\n* www.dreamcatcherstudio.net
\n* www.gallart.net\/painters\/cayung\/siagian.html<\/p>",
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