Kartika Affandi inspires many women<\/p>\n
By Astri Wright<\/p>\n
JAKARTA (JP): Kartika Affandi, 61, has been recognized as one
\nof Indonesia's most important female artists for nearly a decade.
\nHowever, as the daughter of the celebrated painter Affandi and
\nhis first wife, Maryati, also an artist, Kartika has been in the
\npublic eye since she was born. From childhood on, she was raised
\naround art, artists and art making, and she was already painting
\nas a young child. That it should take so long for her to gain
\nrecognition has to do not only with the demands of mothering a
\nbrood of eight, but also with the dominance of men in the modern
\nIndonesian art world since it emerged as an important cultural
\narena in the 1930s.<\/p>\n
Since the mid-1980s, Kartika and a small group of Indonesian
\nwomen artists have, largely due their own tenacity and group
\nefforts, succeeded in exhibiting their work on a regular basis.
\nAs their numbers have steadily grown, as their work has matured,
\nand as more and more people have seen and began to collect it,
\nboth at home and abroad, they have begun to gain critical
\nrecognition.<\/p>\n
It is still symptomatic, however, that when Indonesian group
\nshows travel abroad, such as the KIAS exhibitions in the U.S.A.
\nand in Holland in 1990-1993, foreign curators encounter great
\nreluctance to include Indonesian women artists. And when an
\nexhibition of Indonesia's best senior artists is arranged, such
\nas in 1994, no senior women are represented. The increasingly
\ncommercialized Indonesian art world, as encountered in the
\nmainstream galleries, is still far more comfortable with keeping
\nwomen in their traditional place as far as art goes: as passive,
\npretty objects, cliched Balinese dancers, or nourishing goddesses
\nin men's paintings.<\/p>\n
Within this narrow context, Kartika has nonetheless succeeded
\nin holding solo exhibitions on a regular basis.<\/p>\n
Today, five years after the death of her father, in whose
\nshadow both Maryati and Kartika's art remained during his life,
\nKartika's art emerges as an energetic, personally conceived and
\noriginal contribution. It ranges from fairly conventional but
\nhighly sensual landscapes to subversive, confessional self-
\nportraits and insightful portraits of other people, often people
\nwho have suffered in some way or other.<\/p>\n
In a culture where the individual self rarely is put to the
\nfore, Kartika has made the self-portrait one of her main themes.
\nIn a society where emotion is suppressed, Kartika fills her
\ncanvases with intense feeling. In a culture where genitals are
\nconsidered taboo in representation, Kartika has painted her own
\nand others' nudity graphically and without the prescribed,
\ndistancing sweetness. Going against the Javanese insistence that
\nharmony and beauty be normative for all forms of creative
\nexpression, Kartika creates real-life, sometimes turbulent and
\ndisturbing images. In ways that may not be immediately apparent
\nto the western eye, her work seen from within the context of
\nIndonesian values and esthetics, proclaims the artist's freedom
\nfrom all rules and conventions.<\/p>\n
Inner strength<\/p>\n
Following in the populist footsteps of Affandi, Kartika paints
\nfarmers, fishermen, workers, beggars and handicapped women. She
\npaints people in a way that gives them a tangible psychological
\ndimension, never flattering her subjects by painting them more
\nsuperficial or beautiful than she sees them. The beauty Kartika
\npresents is one of inner strength emerging from the experience of
\nhardship.<\/p>\n
In some of her self-portraits and portraits of others, Kartika
\ndepicts the uncompromising progress of old age. Beginning in
\n1957, with her Portrait of Daddy, and ending with her parents'
\ndeath in 1990 and 1991, she has created a moving series of
\nportraits of her mother and father, both singly and together.
\nEspecially eloquent are the paintings of her sick, aging father,
\ncaptured as life ebbed slowly, leaving his body feeble, while his
\npowerful mind was still \"hungry to paint\", as the title of the
\nexcellent movie about him by Yasir Marzuki states. Kartika's last
\nportraits of Affandi, such as the one showing an emaciated old
\nman painting in the nude as he liked to do, are eloquent
\ndocuments of aging and of a daughter's love which does not shy
\naway from reality to hide behind a nostalgic or romantic fiction,
\nas Papi Painting in then Nude, 1989 and Empty Papi, 1990 clearly
\nshow.<\/p>\n
When viewed at a short distance, both Affandi's and Kartika's
\nwork communicate the aesthetic experience of high-pitched
\ncreative energy deposited in thickly flowing, curving lines of
\npaint. One of the things which distinguished Kartika from her
\nfather is the range of colors in the thin background washes under
\nthe thick impasto relief of oil paints. Kartika's compositions
\nare more controlled and planned, her lines less wild and
\nemotional. In style, Kartika's work ranges from the sweet and
\nidyllic to an expressive realism that can be harsh. The latter is
\nparticularly evident in her paintings of beggars, handicapped
\npeople, and suffering animals -- the latter themes are often
\ndepicted in black and white.<\/p>\n
The self portraits<\/p>\n
Most intensely involving of all, are Kartika's paintings of
\nherself. Since an artist's self-image and life experiences
\nusually inform her self-portraits, central moments in Kartika's
\nlife emerge, often in symbolic form in her depictions of herself.<\/p>\n
The two paintings painted when studying painting restoration
\nin Austria in 1981, entitled The Beginning and Rebirth, are two
\nof the most painful and powerful autobiographical statements in
\nmodern Indonesian art. They are probably also the most overt
\nstatements in Indonesia about the pain of a woman's search for an
\nidentity which truly reflects her as an individual as opposed to
\nreflecting social roles which were imposed on her. Such works are
\nespecially shocking in a culture which emphasizes emotional
\nrestraint. These paintings are disturbing, confessional and by
\nsome standards, ugly -- all qualities which are not sanctioned by
\nconventional Indonesian values.<\/p>\n
Not seeking to idealize her own features, Kartika has in these
\ntwo paintings given us images which are instantly recognizable as
\nher. At the same time, however, she comes to represent every
\nwoman (and by extension, every human being) who has fought to
\ngain freedom from imposed definitions of self and self-respect.
\nTearing off face after face till she reaches the bare bones of
\nher skeleton is a powerful way of suggesting that those faces
\nwere masks representing roles she was socialized to play and not
\nones she chose herself or that representing who she truly was.<\/p>\n
Depicting herself as an old woman with a shaven head being
\nreborn from her own body is a potent illustration of the idea
\nthat liberation and psychic rebirth can only come from within the
\nhusk of the old self. Giving birth to a new and truer self also
\nbecomes the platform from which one can reach out to others in an
\nhonest and open way, creating connections across what before was
\na gap. To Kartika, these paintings have such deeply personal
\nresonance that she will not sell them; they are part of her
\npersonal collection.<\/p>\n
The urge to merge<\/p>\n
In mid-September 1988, Kartika started working on a new type
\nof self-portrait. It was a triple portrait, showing Affandi to
\nthe left, Maryati to the right, and herself in the middle. All
\nthree faces are rooted in the same neck and one of each of her
\nparents' eyes merge with her face to form both of Kartika's eyes.
\nThis portrait embodies a view of the individual self intricately
\nrooted in a larger family context: there is no rejection of
\nparentage here, none of the strain felt in so many parent-child
\nrelationships. Even though the inter-personal relations were in
\nthe past not always free from strains, Kartika shows here a clear
\nembracing of and identification with her source.<\/p>\n
New dimensions related to the above discussion have in recent
\nyears been emerging also in Kartika's general portraiture. Since
\nher reaching personal integration and self-acceptance by the mid-
\n1980s, Kartika has increasingly been using her own experience of
\ngender discrimination, emotional suffering and social
\nostracizing as a vehicle to connect with, and to represent, other
\npeople of different ethnic and geographical backgrounds living
\nsimilar experiences. Raised a Javanese in a dominantly Islamic
\nculture, Kartika has painted Christians in Austria, Hindus in
\nBali, Asmat in Irian Jaya, and aboriginal peoples in Flores,
\nChina and Australia. Both in the actual paintings as in the way
\nKartika works, there is little apparent distance between the
\nartist, as active creator-subject, and her subject matter --
\npeople of dramatically different backgrounds from either the
\nartist or from each other.<\/p>\n
Rather than negating them to create a false sense of
\ntogetherness, Kartika carefully notes necessary details of ethnic
\nand cultural difference in her work. With her direct, open and
\nwarm personality, Kartika manages to establish a personal and
\nartistic connection across ethnic, national, geographical,
\nsociological or gender boundaries, to encompass many different
\nrealms of experience. She frequently manages to establish a sense
\nof trust with people who, often with good historical reasons, are
\notherwise hostile to outsiders. This is evident in the paintings
\nentitled Aboriginal Family from 1991 and 1993.<\/p>\n
One of the provocative techniques Kartika uses to both note
\nand overcome difference, is one of identity merging, in a similar
\nway she did with her triple family self-portrait. For example,
\nwhen an Australian aboriginal woman in 1991 decided she did not
\nwant to be painted after all, leaving Kartika alone in the desert
\nwithout a subject, she sat down to paint herself -- this time
\nwith aboriginal features. The same can be seen in one of her
\nportraits of flood victims from Flores, 1993, and in a canvas
\nfrom China 1994.<\/p>\n
In Self-portrait at Tien An Men, Kartika envisions herself as
\nChinese, wearing a blue cotton jacket and Mao cap. Seated to the
\nside facing the viewer, with the square behind her, Kartika's
\neyes appear to be focused on an internal replay of memories,
\nwhich causes her face to crumple in concentration and grief.
\nBehind her, a mass of yellow flowers is surrounded by swirling,
\nbillowing red paint, which flickers around the yellow-tiled
\nGateway to the Forbidden City and up into the sky. Kartika's face
\nis colored dark red as if reflecting a blazing fire or as if the
\nskin is transparent, showing the blood vessels underneath. The
\nlocation, the composition, the colors and the facial expression
\nall point to the events of June 1989, when the demonstrations for
\ngreater democratic participation ended in a blood-bath as the
\nmilitary opened fire on a peaceful mass of students,
\nintellectuals and workers. Like a witness and a mourning family
\nmember, the artist places herself in the middle of Tienanmen,
\nwhere the voices silenced and the blood spilled can speak to, and
\nthrough, her body and her subsequent act of painting.<\/p>\n
This kind of identity merging, rather than being an
\nappropriation of other people's images, must be seen as a kind of
\nbridge building, inspired by a position of empathy, solidarity
\nand an urge to merge. These constitute a web of feelings and
\nintellectual positions which negates the fragmentation,
\npowerlessness, and dispossession that characterizes so much post-
\nmodern writing. Kartika's work challenges Derrida's position that
\neverything (including action and the personal subject) can be
\nreduced to speech, which, the theory goes, does not matter anyway
\nas it cannot effect positive change or make any difference in the
\nworld.<\/p>\n
In ways that parallel much contemporary feminist writing that
\ndenounces postmodern thought, Kartika's work and life posits an
\nalternative which allows action and meaning as well as the
\npersonal subject to exist. Her radical portraiture and self-
\nportraiture, rooted in real life contexts and carrying narrative
\nmeanings, lends sanction to the validity of individual people's
\nidentities and experiences.<\/p>\n
Conclusion<\/p>\n
The late 1980s saw Kartika finally confident about being in
\ncontrol of her life and art. She is comfortable with her multiple
\nroles as artist, painting restorer, president of the Affandi
\nFoundation, employer, mother and grandmother. She is the economic
\nmatriarch of a large family and patron to the people of a small
\nmountain village where she has built her retreat-home.<\/p>\n
Although Kartika in 1989 was represented in only one of Bali's
\nthree major galleries, Rudana's, and in one of Jakarta's, Duta,
\nthe last five years have seen a growing interest in her work
\ninternationally, leading to invitations for Kartika to give
\nlectures, workshops and hold exhibitions in the U.S. and
\nAustralia, with more planned for Austria and Japan. Furthermore,
\nKartika sells as well as many highly acclaimed male painters.
\nLike other Indonesian artists between exhibitions, she sells from
\nhome, the Affandi Museum in Yogyakarta, which also houses the art
\nof Affandi and Maryati.<\/p>\n
Kartika is one of less than a handful of female painters in
\nIndonesia who have thought or dared to openly express the pain
\nand struggle of a woman in search of her true identity no matter
\nhow this might clash with culturally imposed roles of womanhood
\nand wifehood. Through her art, workshops, exhibitions and
\nlectures, such as the ones she gave at the Seniwati Gallery for
\nWomen Artists in Ubud, Bali, in December 1992, she has inspired
\nmany women who were struggling against family-members and social
\nperceptions to gain the freedom to pursue an art career. Indeed,
\nKartika could be called the mother of contemporary Indonesian
\npainting. So far, three fathers -- a biological and developmental
\nimpossibility -- have been positioned by the art critics,
\nSudjojono, Affandi and Hendra Gunawan.<\/p>\n
On a more general level, Kartika champions the right of
\nIndonesian women to pursue careers in any area of their choice,
\nalso in professions not conventionally open to them. By
\nsuccessfully bridging distances between herself and other human
\nbeings, both in Indonesia and in different parts of the world,
\nKartika is carving out a new Indonesian model for female self-
\nempowerment and global concern. A painting is worth a thousand
\nwords and knows no language barriers.<\/p>\n
Astri Wright is professor of South and Southeast Asian Art,
\nUniversity of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.<\/p>",
"url": "https:\/\/jawawa.id\/newsitem\/kartika-affandi-inspires-many-women-1447893297",
"image": ""
},
"sponsor": "Okusi Associates",
"sponsor_url": "https:\/\/okusiassociates.com"
}