Auctions preserve Asmat tribal traditions

By Amir Sidharta

JAKARTA (JP): The Asmat Art Festival and auctions have been held since 1981. They are organized jointly by the Diocese of Agats-Asmat and the regional administration.

Since Agats is not only the cultural center of the region but also the center of the Catholic mission, the event received the full support of the bishop of the region, Alphonse A. Sowada.

The bishop is not only in favor of the Asmat continuing their tribal traditions, but it seems that he supports the auctions because the event has the potential to heighten the quality of life of members of the community.

Closing the morning session of the second day, after witnessing the auction himself, Irian Jaya Governor Freddy Numberi expressed his impressions of the event.

"This event has proved able to increase welfare, while at the same time preserving the heritage of the community," he said, and asked the organizers to continue their efforts.

Sowada mentioned that in the beginning he made a mistake in approaching the issue. In the early 1970s, when he and the members of the community of Agats were setting up their museum, they wanted to keep the tradition of making Asmat artifacts alive.

So, he organized a contest for primary school children to carve objects. After five years, he came to realize that the carvings were made by the parents of the children, not the children themselves.

So, since 1981, the competition has been geared to woodcarvers. Sowada hoped that the older woodcarvers would then pass on the tradition to the younger members of the community and the tradition would continue in that fashion, with the competition as the catalyst. And, it seems to have worked; many of the woodcarvers joining the competition are young men.

"I saw auctions when I was a kid," said Sowada, and it seems that it was this experience that inspired him to hold auctions of Asmat art. The participants of the auctions initially were limited to the mission, but gradually they attracted outside interest and a market emerged.

Last year, the auctions attracted many buyers. The pieces fetched prices ranging from Rp 75,000 to Rp 2.3 million, thanks to the support of among others Seichi Okawa, the Japanese correspondent of the Indonesian news magazine Gatra.

In August that year, Okawa organized an exhibition of Asmat art in Tokyo as part of the Indonesian Festival in Japan. The auction fetched a revenue of Rp 120 million, 10 percent of which is withheld by the organizers for the event the following year.

This year's budget consisted of funds earned from the previous year plus donations from the regional administration, the Diocese, the Asmat Foundation and Freeport.

What is truly remarkable about this event, apart from its energetic and dynamic mood, is that everything in the auction sold. Even in times of boom, the auctions of Southeast Asian painting at Christie's and Sotheby's sell an average of around 70 percent of the pieces they offer.

In the Asmat auctions, the sale of all the pieces is the result of the absence of reserves, the price limit that the item must reach before it is considered sold.

However, on the other hand, the absence of reserves often causes participants to overlook the value of the pieces. After the sale in Timika, filmmaker Dea Sudarman asserted that Asmat art is still undervalued.

She pointed out that the medium used by the carver, the costs of production set by the labor and the costs of tools that the artist use, and also the artistic value of the carving itself, are often taken for granted by the buyers.

"Now the price of gaharu wood is so high," she said, suggesting that most people would gather gaharu rather than carve Asmat statues. For Asmat art to survive, their prices need to be competitive compared to gaharu.

Better attention should also be given to the winners of the art competition, whose works are not auctioned but obtained by the museum in return for the cash award of Rp 1,000,000 provided by the regional government and the Asmat Foundation.

Of course, they can return to their villages with pride because their work will be on display in the Asmat Museum in Agats. However, the money they return with may be much less than what another carver managed to get from his work, which was not even considered by the jurors.

Yet, photographer and writer Kal Muller mentions that the Asmat know that the results of the auctions are determined by a combination of the quality of the piece the carvers bring in, who attends the sales and their tastes, the amount of interest in their piece, and other factors of luck. After 17 years, the Asmat already well understand the issues surrounding the auctions.

Due to the still relatively cheap prices of Asmat art, it would seem logical to also hold an auction of Asmat art abroad. Apparently, Sotheby's already has plans to do this in New York in May next year.

Although Bishop Sowada is certainly supportive of this plan, he emphasized the need for the annual auctions to continue to be held in Agats. "It is important to have the auctions here, because it is what gives them spirit and identity," Sowada asserted.

Therefore, we can be sure that next year there will be yet another auction of Asmat art in conjunction with the Asmat Festival.

"The Asmat festival opens on the second Monday in October every year," reminded Bishop Sowada. Next year, the Kamoro Festival, which was held in April this year, will instead be held on the weekend following the Asmat Festival. Therefore, we should anticipate the two events will draw an even larger audience to Irian Jaya.