Arts Summit Indonesia: Much lacking in first visual arts exhibition

Arts Summit Indonesia: Much lacking in first visual arts exhibition

Carla Bianpoen, Contributor, Jakarta

The opening of the fourth Art Summit Indonesia on
Sept. 11 in the open air of Galeri Nasional Indonesia kindled
high expectations for the visual arts exhibition, which was
included for the first time in the international summit.
Unfortunately, it failed to deliver.

As the flickering lighting played on the old Galeri Nasional
Indonesia building amid the reverberating music of I Wayan Sadra,
there was the feeling this was something different, yet entirely
worthy of the prestigious event.

Even the failure of the curtain to open on time was taken in
stride.

In hindsight, it could be considered an omen of what was to
come.

While Masuda Hiromi's glass installation in the main hall
initially seemed to justify high expectations for the visual arts
summit, S. Teddy D.'s Demarcation installation, which has been
seen in the Yogya Biennale and elsewhere, was the first sign to
alert all was not right.

For frequent art exhibition visitors, there were too many
works that did not meet the expectations of a summit.

For example, there was the art installation of Mella Jaarsma
with the same theme of identity, minority, etc., renewed only
with a changing motif on the burkha; Nindityo Adipurnama's
eternal hairbun in the interactive installation titled Massage a
la Hairbun placed in the same space as at CP Biennale, or
Dolorosa Sinaga's sculptures -- we had all seen them to the point
of boredom.

In addition, the three lone painters represented -- IGK
Murniasih, Dikdik Sayahdikumullah and Made Wianta -- made us
wonder how these works could possibly reflect the top of the rich
painting community.

Meanwhile. Agus Suwage's controversial installation Air Seni
(Urine), consisting of a real urinal and five monitors to show
the act of urinating, with the artist's actual peeing witnessed
by the public and his wife, provoked graffiti -- both in support
and against the work -- on the surrounding walls.

Fortunately, there is more to the exhibition, with Nyoman
Erawan's stirring installation of faces made of stone, spread in
a "pool" of sand and hung along the walls of the space Ritus
Wajah di Batu-Batu (The Rite of Face on the Stones); Krisna
Murti's impressive multimedia installation (E)Art(h)quake,
consisting of a giant mythological dragon looking over a plot of
sand that transforms into the tides brought about by a video and
uniting with the sound of thunder.

There is also Arahmaiani's lyrical video art, I Don't Want to
be Part of Your Legend, using just a leaf and a wayang puppet
accompanied by poetic text to question women's status in the
burning of Sita in the Ramayana epic story

Heri Dono's innovative blend of low- and high-tech to portray
the difference in rural peace and urban buzz also helps the
overall display. Tisna Sanjaya provides a theatrical illustration
of a world that is upside down through the portrayal of a
skeleton in the upside-down position, fenced in with quotes from
famous authors like TS Elliot and Wiji Thukul.

The participation of foreign artists from Australia, France,
Japan, Pakistan and Thailand is an asset, but their works would
have been better understood by the public if there had been some
kind of explanation on their backgrounds.

The photo exhibition of Eliza Huchinson's portraits, for
instance, is a series of photographic performance portraits,
presented as exaggerated characters in order to capture a range
of physical and psychological responses to the action of gravity
on the body.

The same goes for the photographs by Darren Siwes, an
Aboriginal photographer from Australia, which become outspoken
and stirring once one knows their context in Aboriginal society
in colonial times, evoking questions that are revealed in the
title Just is, which can also be read as "justice".

Naoko Majima's large canvases Heaven and Paradise, filled with
little charcoal points or lines, would be even more interesting
with the knowledge that the act of drawing leads her in a kind of
trance in which visions of the distant past are revealed.

Masuda Hiromi's material of glass alone attracts attention,
but understanding her Requiem installation that goes beyond a
mere condolence wreath would come with the information that the
green palms on bare dry branches, and the addition of small
yellow coconuts, substantiate her belief that there is life after
death.

Moreover, the video works of Bruno Samper and Pierre Giner
from France would be an enlightening example of groundbreaking
digital video art if there had been some information on their
backgrounds.

Samper is a highly skilled designer and founder of the Net
revue Panoplie whose work in this exhibition, Society, was
created for the first New Media Art Biennale in France. Keep the
Distance by Giner experiments with the complexity of space
occupation inside virtual worlds and our relationship with
reality, thus revealing the stigmata of a new way of perceiving
the world.

The lack of attention to thorough selection of works, and the
apparent dearth of even minimal communication efforts, is
compounded by a website with inadequate information (sad to say,
most of it is from an article written by me for this paper,
without any attribution).

It is hardly surprising that the visual arts part of the Art
Summit Indonesia, unlike Wayan Sadra's music on opening night,
failed to cause any reverberations.

One would be inclined to agree with artist F.X. Harsono's
comment in a discussion held on Tuesday at Galeri Nasional
Indonesia: "Let's be professional, and if we can't, then it's
better not to have a summit than having one that doesn't deserve
its title".

i-box:

Galeri Nasional Indonesia
Jl. Medan Merdeka Timur No. 14,
Jakarta 10110
Tel: 34833954