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