Artist explains why politics smells

By Chandra Johan

JAKARTA (JP): Politics is always a pile of dung. Time does not change it. At least, according to Odji Lirungan, who is holding a drawing exhibition titled Bullshit at the Millennium Gallery, South Jakarta, from Sept. 14 to Oct. 6. Indeed, a number of artists have "bulls***ted" (belittled) reality lately, because we are entering an era of uncertainty, contingency; everything is quick and only temporarily. Nobody in this country is capable of defining what kind of reality we are facing, except possibilities and expectations.

The art of drawing, whether it be with ink, pencil or charcoal, has its own autonomy, as does the art of painting. Long before oil paints were discovered, the ancient Chinese had made black drawings with ink on paper to express their feelings and experiences. But in Indonesia, drawing is still regarded as a second-class medium. Whereas with drawings we could know more the strength of lines and the technical skill of an artist. A painting can be manipulated with colors, while a drawing, mainly black and white, can not. Especially when the artist uses ink and pen.

Odji, in this case, uses ink and pen in his solo exhibition. Generally, his drawings are formed by hatching around the subjects, so that a chiaroscuro effect is brought to the surface. The density of each mark of the pen shows his perseverance and patience. For the darker parts of an object he makes the lines close together, while brighter parts he spaces them out. This is truly elementary in the study of drawing, but this same elementary problem too has never escaped the reach of the world's great artists, like Rembrandt and Durer.

With this skill of drawing he wants to release all his grudges of recent reality. He releases a number of clouded feelings, like nausea, anger, hatred, pity and fear into a drawing space. As in his oil paintings, Odji tends to draw the life of a group of humans as a mass, or mass hysteria, dramatically and theatrically. A crowd in Odji's hands is like a group of mentally sick people, with bad figures and faces.

"I see, I hear and I read and I watch how everybody is busy campaigning, not for the people, but for their own interests. This party, that party, all are speaking nonsense, bulls..t!", he says. "Therefore, my works are expressions of feeling nauseated toward all that".

Odji, who graduated from the Indonesian Art Institute (ISI) of Yogyakarta in 1986, makes metaphors through his drawings, like Lomba Ngibul (Lying Contest), Pesta Demokrasi I (Democracy Festival), Pesta Demokrasi II, Adu Argumen (Debate), Baku Suap (Bribing) and Mimpi-Mimpi Tentang Kursi Kayu (Dreams about Wooden Seats). In that metaphor emerges a feeling of cynicism. He doesn't believe in the political elite who hide behind a party's flag or number, but they have the support of their followers. Such a reality has the same meaning as if the political elite are hiding in packages given only a number, and the followers are like clowns, punk rockers or puppets in Lomba Ngibul.

In each drawing the space is not too narrow to insert the whole problem of life into one story, like a stage in a theater. For this he doesn't heed normal anatomical rules. In Lomba Ngibul, for example, he shows not only a group of masked politicians, their followers and clowns. The victims are seen in the corner of the painting, while in the left corner there is a group of people with their mouths sewn shut, and portrayed with the kind of wind-up keys found in children's toys. We might guess what it means.

Pesta Demokrasi II depicts a scene of mass hysteria, i.e., a crowd of apparently mentally deranged people. Some appear angry, hot-tempered, some look like they are in pain, some tired, bloated, and others look scared and pathetic. Like in his other pictures, humans have lost their individualism and personalities. Humans even don't look like humans, but neither do they look like animals. The structure is human, but not the soul, of those who celebrate victory or those who are thrown into poverty.

The mass is a group of anonymous humans. If we see humans as a such a crowd we'll truly never know their individual characteristic. When we are at the right distance and see a group of people in the street passing by, what we see are their movements, a little of their expressions, and especially that we can not reach them as individuals. So it is with Odji's drawings. He never wants to give a certain identifiable personality to the figures he draws. Although he does with political figures. The identities can be known by their numbers and symbols.

Adu Argumen is a cynical portrayal of community figures around us: political figures, religious figures, intellectuals and even artists. All are willing to voice their own version of the "truth", babbling away and wanting to show themselves as the purest. As shown by Odji, they want to push their conviction to others and race each other in their arguments. If they are not heard, according to Odji, they will use violence. In this picture Odji has depicted hand gesticulations, suggesting violence in the oral form. In this case perhaps they don't use common sense -- a limited commodity -- to arrive at the "truth", but violence.