Artist Tisna Sanjaya in search of peace

Artist Tisna Sanjaya in search of peace

By Matdon

BANDUNG (JP): When trying to get a good grasp of the ideas of
Tisna Sanjaya, a 52-year-old graphic artist from Bandung, most
would first raise their brows before finally comprehending his
pristine ideas. Some may smile bitterly, laugh in pain or burst
into tears for no apparent reason.

A year ago, he paraded around Bandung five wooden statues of
naked men with erect penises in an installation exhibition called
"Monument Marking 32 Years of Thinking with Your Knees" and then
installed them in the yard of the West Java regional legislative
council, in front of the Bandung regional police headquarters, at
the French Cultural Center and in other corners of the city. At
first people assumed he was putting on a dirty show.

However, once this display was understood to be a form of
enlightenment, a piece of self-criticism for this nation, it was
then realized that the idea was indeed beautiful and brilliant.

Between Sept. 5 and Sept. 30, Tisna Sanjaya again exhibits his
works at Cemeti Arts House in Yogyakarta. This time it is titled
Art and Football Peace. Again, he had a breakthrough of ideas
about the life of the Indonesian nation in his etches and
sketches. These works are hard to understand at first, but after
knitting our brows, they set us contemplating, absorbed in his
free-flowing thoughts.

Art and Football Peace is a rather weird exhibition because,
apart from the aesthetic elements displayed in the exhibition
room of Cemeti, all graphic works were made with an etching
technique on a water container, 16 black-and-white drawings are
on a piece of plaited bamboo formerly used for a wall, depicting
life's journey and supplemented with poems as text.

Outside the exhibition room, a soccer match is held,
participated in by some 20 teams from Bandung and Yogyakarta.

The matches are held on a small field, with the goal posts
resembling the genital of a woman. Perhaps Tisna intended this to
depict fertility, a place out of which a fresh generation will
emerge. Or, perhaps, it depicts a game played by people who do
not want to be left behind by others in conveying their desires,
be they legally justified or otherwise.

On the field there is also a place where clothes are washed
and another for making traditional herbal concoctions. This may
be understood to mean cleansing one's own guilt, then losing
control of oneself again, and afterward taking the herbal
concoction, being cured but eventually returning to negligence.

At the opening of the exhibition and the performance, there
was a message that soccer symbolizes peace. According to Tisna,
compared with other kinds of sports, soccer has the most body
contact and instances of negligence. As part of this exhibition,
the soccer matches are participated in by ordinary people and
artists from Yogyakarta and Bandung.

Each team is made up of five players. The soccer match itself
is called Turtledove Cup and is held at Krapyak Baru field.
Around the field, the spectators may give comments, read poems,
pray, perform their own cultural pieces, play music and so forth.

Each team must enroll by way of donating a seed to be planted
around the field. The champion gets turtledoves, the runner-up
gets a motorcycle and third place gets five chickens.

A losing team is dropped. There is just one referee for the
entire competition. This must mean that the referee is
responsible for everything happening on the field. In soccer
matches organized by the All Indonesian Soccer Federation (PSSI),
a match is sometimes decided upon by many "referees" such as the
soccer players, spectators, members of the governing board,
extraordinary members and so forth.

"This is also a depiction of Indonesia as a state. There are
'many' presidents. Many make statements as they wish. Many show
their desire to take care of this country and decide things based
on their own wishes," Tisna told The Jakarta Post in Bandung.

In this exhibition, Tisna, a fine artist with initiative, is
assisted by Wawan S. Husin, who takes care of linguistic matters,
the text, the sound and the gestures that soccer players and
spectators make. Asmudjo and Aming D Rahman act as critics and
video artists.

Art and Football Peace intentionally presents
installation/field performance and soccer matches as an art
advocacy that the soccer field is our earth which must be
safeguarded. It must be provided with a field where honesty
blooms and grows and is watered with courage to speak the truth.
A prayer must be made in the political, economic, social,
cultural and religious arenas to ensure that the world will be a
field of peace without violence.

As a whole, the ideas that Tisna brings forth are ordinary.
Other artists in Indonesia may also have these ideas. However, in
the mind of Tisna, who has held 35 exhibitions at home and
abroad, these ideas become crystal-clear, simple and natural. His
works are easy to interpret in the context of real life as the
ideas behind them are neat although, of course, this
interpretation must entail a process of illumination on the part
of the community.

In Indonesia, installation work displayed by artists has yet
to gain popularity among broad segments of the community, as such
work is understood mainly only by the artist community. Tisna's
works are actually very close to gaining acceptance by the
community. Just like in a soccer match, he is only one step away
from scoring a goal: perhaps from a free kick, a penalty kick,
penetration, keeping or even a corner kick. It means that it is
only a step away for Tisna until his thoughts are understood by
people outside of the art world.

Art and Football Peace will also be exhibited in Paris,
France, on Oct. 5. Tisna, a lecturer at Bandung Institute of
Technology (ITB), has in fact exhibited his works several times
abroad, such as in Germany, the Netherlands, Australia, the
United States and Japan.