Farah Wardani, Contributor, Jakarta

Farah Wardani, Contributor, Jakarta

Between 1973 and 1983, a child exodus occurred in Indonesia,
whereby a great number of Indonesian babies and children were
taken by adoptive parents from foreign countries, mostly the
Netherlands. These children were given away by their biological
parents for many reasons, from escaping social and cultural
restrictions for having an illegitimate child, to purely economic
motives.

This phenomenon became such a serious problem, resembling the
export of Indonesian workers to foreign countries, that the
government eventually stopped it officially in 1983. That little
piece of this country's history then slowly faded from memory,
concealing questions on what then happened to the children
afterwards, and what sort of life they might have led.

Valentijn (Tino) Van Dijk, alias Tino Djumini, was one of the
given-away children. He was adopted in 1978 by a Dutch family
that was first shown a photograph of three-year-old Tino with the
words "Nice Boy" written on the back. From then on, Tino grew up
to become a part of his Dutch family as well as a Dutch citizen.

He undertook studies in art and currently works as a freelance
photographer in the Netherlands. He then returned to Indonesia to
trace his biological mother, whom he eventually found and met.

From such beginnings we can already expect that Tino Van Dijk
has a compelling story in store for us. We can also see an
intriguing path that shows how photos have become a significant
element in his biography -- the way the major change in his life
started early on with a simple photograph and then how he became
a photographer when he grew up.

Inevitably, photography is what he has chosen as the medium to
tell us his story. His exhibition is at Galeri Soemardja at the
Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), Bandung. The exhibition
presents a compilation of black-and-white family portraits taken
in Indonesia and the Netherlands.

Entitled Nice Boy, like that picture of him back in 1978 and
just as his exhibition curator, Rifky Effendy, says in the
catalog, it was like presenting "photography of fate."

This can be seen vividly in two photos that are displayed
alongside each other, which portray Van Dijk with each of his two
families, one with his middle-class Dutch adoptive parents in the
Netherlands, the other with his biological mother's humble family
in Indonesia.

The two pictures reflect Van Dijk's double unbelonging, his
displacement in both of his families, how he differs physically
and racially from his Dutch parents, and how the aura that
emanates from his stare, character and mannerisms that resulted
from his Dutch upbringing mark him out from his Indonesian family
and its surroundings.

Furthermore, Van Dijk also invites us to join him in engaging
with the stories of the others, in portrayals of various
Indonesian and Dutch families that he met through personal or
coincidental encounters, and also by research.

The Indonesian series presents portraits of "ordinary"
Indonesian families from a broad range of social classes. The
Dutch series presents various middle-class Dutch families with
their adopted children from Indonesia, with an exception of one
that presents a young married couple with their son, in which the
husband was an adopted child from Colombia and the wife
Indonesian-born, who had moved to the Netherlands.

All the photographs are captured in the utmost simplicity,
portraying the families in common family portrait poses, mostly
in their homes, accompanied by short texts explaining the
background of each.

Yet, it is intriguing to see how the Indonesian and Dutch
scenes are juxtaposed one with another, the way they display
images of "proper" families and other versions of families with
one or more "displaced" members within them, the ones that stand
out for being "the others."

They make us look back to our own family portraits, how they
identify ourselves, signifying our sense of shelter, a place in
this world for us to claim and to return to. In another way, it
is also an institution in itself.

Van Dijk sorts out his series of images like throwing cards on
the table for the audience, giving them the space to go beyond
the smiling faces on the pictures, excavating the stories beneath
as well as exploring the possibilities that might have happened
along the way. Being one of the subjects of his own work, his
personal engagement intensifies the depth of all the narrations
he has collected and encapsulated, both visually, in his
photography, and also textually in his writing in the exhibition
catalog, which could serve as an autonomous narrative project in
itself.

The exhibition as a whole is thought-provoking, stimulating us
to rethink our concepts of family in relation to various aspects
such as norms, sociocultural constructions, kinship, legacy,
history and memory. Moreover, it also can lead us to think how we
perceive ourselves within this increasingly globalized world,
which is endlessly transforming, along with values and notions of
identity itself.

Nice Boy, exhibition of photos by Valentijn (Tino) Van Dijk at
Galeri Soemardja ITB, Jl. Ganesha No. 10, Bandung, until Oct. 20,
2003.