Artists portray Jakarta chaos as 'inferno'

Artists portray Jakarta chaos as 'inferno'

Yusuf Susilo Hartono, Contributor, Jakarta

In the past week, the Jakarta Cultural Center, Taman Ismail
Marzuki, has housed a very big rat as tall as the roof of a two-
story building.

It is the paper rat mascot of the Metropolitan II fine art
exhibition being put on by the Metromini group at Galeri Cipta
II.

Please don't mistake the members of this fine art group as
Jakarta Metromini bus drivers, drivers so notorious for their
reckless driving.

They are fine artists with a good reputation. And all of them,
because of growing up and being educated in Jakarta, are deeply
concerned about the capital city.

The group is made up of Awan P. Simatupang, Agoes Saliem,
Bernauli Pulungan, Benny R. Tahalele, Firman Lie, Hanung Mahadi,
Hardiman Radjab, Jerry T, Sari Bustami and Syamsul Hidayat.

As Syahnagra Ismail, a member of the Fine Art Committee of the
Jakarta Arts Council, says in the catalog, which unfortunately
does not give enough information, the present exhibition
represents a continuation of the Metropolitan I exhibition held
in Jakarta in April 2001.

Initially, a number of fine art alumni from the Jakarta Art
Institute, including Syahnagra himself, got together to discuss
matters related to fine art and the city of Jakarta as a dwelling
place and a source of inspiration.

Curator Merwan Yusuf said that compared to Metropolitan I,
Metropolitan II is broader in terms of media, space and ways of
expression. Beauty is not the goal but priority is given to
social sensitivity.

The big rat, symbol of greed and corruption, by Jerry T,
visually appears as a polite figure without any horrifying
aspect, and may be said to symbolize "the big-wig rats" living
securely in skyscrapers or in projects worth trillions of rupiah.

Meanwhile, there is a statue of a life-sized fat rat placed on
top of a drum inside the gallery with its head badly misshapen
following a beating. Esthetically and visually, this work is more
powerful in how it describes the tragic life of "a small rat".

Remember how many thieves and pickpockets have been burned
alive by mobs who have lost their trust in the formal laws and
law enforcers? Meanwhile, how many "large rats" can still live in
peace, continue to gnaw on the state's wealth and enjoy the
protection of the powers-that-be.

You may have a different opinion about rats. Surely, "rats"
are only one of a host of social ills in a large city like
Jakarta: criminality, prostitution, drug abuse, consumerism,
hedonism, materialism, individualism, you name it!

Another member of the Metromini group, Samsul Hidayat,
displays his Stairway to Heaven, a winged bike placed in front of
a drawing depicting the human journey from time immemorial until
the age of the wheel. This work seems to remind us of the need to
choose environmentally friendly vehicles.

Then Agus Saliem, another member of the group, touches our
emotions with the lot of women working as sex workers in red-
light districts with his Kos-Kosan Ngos-Ngosan (Panting Lodgers).
Pictures of sexy women from porn magazines are combined in a
collage in three small houses, each located on stilts as high as
a human being, complete with headlines and advertisements cut
from the print media.

Agus' work is the opposite of the work of Jerry T, Enjoy Your
Stay in Jakarta, which depicts a naked woman (a doll) lying in a
full bathtub with her right hand holding a drink and her toes
placed exactly below a map of Jakarta stretched out on the wall.

In the middle of the gallery, Awan Simatupang, presents his
work titled 17 Tahun Ke atas (17 years and over). This work takes
the form of a game of arranging 25 boxes into five rows of five
boxes each. Visitors gladly participate in the game: taking apart
the boxes and rearranging them again. One of the arrangements
depicts a sensual woman with an inscription reading Anita Ingin
Dirangsang (Anita Wants to be Sexually Aroused).

Bernauli Pulungan with his installation work called Teror di
Jalanan (Terror in the Street) alludes to crime in Jakarta. Sharp
objects like axes, machetes and broad swords are arranged behind
four hanging plastic bags patched with plaster tape here and
there. Some of the plastic bags have been ripped by the red axes.
Through this work, Bernauli shouts out loud and clear that the
terror must stop.

There are figures without limbs like in the work by Benny
Ronald Tahalele called Struggle, Sacrifice Sublime, or the
unnamed work by Sari Bustami consisting of clothes without
bodies.

All these works, including the work of Firman Lie titled
Kiriman (Something Dispatched), constitute a gloomy picture of
Jakarta as an "inferno".

In fact, many see Jakarta as heaven, the main reason why many
people from the regions have moved here. When these migrant
people suffer a setback in Jakarta, they must remember this old
Manado song: Who has asked you to come to Jakarta/ You have come
here yourself/ so you must yourself feel what it is like to be in
Jakarta/ edo-e my love.

The exhibition will run through to 28 July 2002 at Cipta II
Gallery, TIM, Jl. Cikini Raya 73, Central Jakarta