Adi Jumaadi's world of art is in the living

Adi Jumaadi's world of art is in the living

Dewi Anggraeni, Contributor, Melbourne, Australia

At the opening reception of The South Project conference in
Melbourne last week, among a gathering of people of different
racial backgrounds from various places in the southern
hemisphere, Adi Jumaadi did not just blend into the background.

Maybe it was because he is fairly tall (178 cm) for an
Indonesian. Or perhaps, despite his decidedly unassuming manner,
it was due to his quiet magnetic aura, and his face reveals
openness and a natural ability to absorb everything new.

He does not put on airs. He does not talk about his
achievement as an artist unless someone specifically asks about
it. In fact, in the conference, he conducted a workshop on making
straw puppets, known in Javanese as wayang suket. The
participants were taken by the engaging way he taught them while
telling them personal stories steep in the cultural cradle where
the making of these puppets took place.

He did not once drop any hint that, since finishing his
scholarship at the National Arts School in Sydney in 2000, he had
won several awards in Australia, among them, the Waverley Arts
Prize, Art on the Rocks and the Salon des Refusis. He also was
highly commended for the Mosman Art Prize only last year.

When I pressed him, without affectation, he described himself
as a kampong boy. Born 30 years ago in the small rural village of
Pecantingan in Sidoarjo, East Java, Adi may have traveled a fair
way, but deep in his psyche he is still very much grounded in his
village.

He has always been interested in environmental issues, which
prompted the question if that had anything to do with him being
an artist.

"Probably because I was born and brought up in a rural
village," Adi replied. "From the word go, we learned from our
parents about the importance of rivers, rice fields, bamboo and
other plants, to us villagers. Now, what we learned then has a
name: ecosystem."

Adi's family lived in a fish-farming area, and his father
would make nets and weave fish-catching baskets using slivers of
bamboo. Adi and his friends would pick up the unused bamboo
slivers and would make wayang puppets out of them.

"We'd use just about anything available. Cassava twigs, long
grass, anything free lying around," he recalled.

"As a little boy, I used to take my family's ducks from rice
field to rice field for them to find food," Adi reminisced. "I
remember that when I was five years old, my family had about 300
ducks. During rice-planting season, and during the time when the
stalks were still young, the ducks would eat the insects which
would have been a problem to the farmers.

"Then at harvesting times, the ducks would eat the slugs and
the snails which would have been terrible pests. So I learned
about the ecosystem naturally.

"When I felt tired, I'd get together with other villagers,
adults and children alike, and we would entertain ourselves
making wayang puppets from straw, then we'd stage impromptu
performances with improvised instruments. We became skilled in
improvising musical instruments with our own voices.

It also provided an education in other ways.

"In fact," Adi added brightly, "that was how I learned
Javanese literary language. As we played with wayang puppets, we
performed. And we learned about the Mahabharata story. The
Mahabharata story was always told in a literary language. Now
that there is hardly literature taught in Indonesian primary
schools, I try to reintroduce it by visiting the kampongs and
teaching the children some literary language through our own
cultural mores."

The lore of the Mahabharata is indeed entrenched in Adi's
family's realm of consciousness. This became very clear in the
way he described his family.

"I have three younger brothers, since the youngest died.
Originally we were the five Pandawa," he said, referring to one
of the Bharata families in the epic story.

Adi does not go for elitism, and likes telling the story about
the development of wayang in East Java.

"It is actually the result of a famous act of dissent on the
part of Prince Pekik in the 17th century, against the
establishment, the kingdom of Mataram. The prince found that
wayang had become the property of the elite. Mahabharata, for
example, had to be performed in 12 hours and the audience had to
stay the whole time. He began to break down this inflexibility by
creating other forms of wayang puppets, made of wood, instead of
the traditional buffalo hide.

"While the original Mahabharata stops at Parikesit (the
grandson of Arjuna), Prince Pekik made it continue, to Damar
Wulan. Damar Wulan was a peasant who married a queen and became a
Javanese king."

This strong equalizing drive falls nicely with The South
Project's objectives of facilitating dialogue between countries
in the southern hemisphere to raise consciousness of their own
potential.

He sees centralization of the north breaking down, and of
local cultures beginning to gain importance and eminence.

"I believe in the equality of all cultures and their
respective arts. Grass puppets from East Java are not inferior to
European paintings, for example. The arts of people from New
Zealand, Tonga, South Africa, South America, are equally
important."

Personally, Adi has to a great extent proven his stance, by
winning awards for his artistic works, in Australia.