Cayung bridges cultural divisions

Cayung bridges cultural divisions

Cynthia Webb, Contributor, New York City

From a family in which a career in the arts was
frowned upon, Cayung Siagian has found success in a land far from
home, but he is still a North Sumatra boy at heart.

Cayung Siagian is one of the huge number of Indonesians sharing
their rich cultural heritage with others around the planet.

He sees himself as a spiritual being having a human
experience, rather than the other way around, and when you look
at his artworks or read his poetry, you will agree this is a good
description.

He was born in 1968 in Balige, a small town on the southern
shores of Lake Toba, North Sumatra, a Toba Batak and very proud
of it.

He learned to read and write in the ancient Toba Batak
hieroglyphic script, which many of his peers today have not
bothered to do. He studied his rich cultural heritage with great
appreciation. Although he has now been away from Indonesia for
seven years, his Batak identity is just as strong within him --
perhaps even stronger now.

Cayung (his given name is Richard) is one of seven children of
a teacher and housewife. The siblings all attended university and
pursued successful professional lives.

Cayung laughingly said he was "the black sheep" of the family
-- the one with a strong artistic personality. He says that most
of his four brothers had better drawing skills than him, but did
not pursue their artistic bent.

Cayung's father envisaged a career as an accountant for him,
but after a year he changed to tourism studies, something a
little more in keeping with his personality. He attempted for a
while to live according to the family ideals, working in the
tourism and entertainment world.

Of course the "inner artist" could not be suppressed
indefinitely. While living and working in Bali, surrounded by art
and also foreign influences, Cayung made up his mind to live
according to his truth. He left his steady job to become a full
time artist. He moved to Ubud and began filling sketchbooks,
making paintings, and also writing poetry.

He also has a strong and fine musical appreciation, and during
his time in Bali, he came into contact with the trance-dance
movement sweeping around the world at the time. Spreading from
Goa, India, full moon parties were held in Bali as well as other
locations in Southeast Asia.

The original concept was to dance all night in beautiful
outdoor locations chosen for their atmosphere. This, plus the
special rhythmic nature of the music, encourages a transcendental
state to develop in the participants.

The international nature of Goa Trance, the music and the free
wheeling energy of the participants banish parochial attitudes
and tastes. Barriers are broken down between people, and sharing
and love emerges. This freedom and multiculturalism appeals
strongly to Cayung's wider worldview.

During this time, Cayung's artistic work method was
increasingly bypassing brushes and he was using his finger to
apply paint, in an attempt to be more intimately connected --
literally "in touch" with his work. As this self-taught artist
developed his technical skills, ideas flowed and his subject
matter became increasingly imaginative.

In November 1997 he had a unique solo art exhibition, finger
painting for three days at a rather charming location in
Junjungan Village, close to Ubud. It was an area of palm trees
among the nearby rice paddies (is it just a coincidence that
Junjungan is also one of his own middle names?).

Instead of exhibiting in a gallery, he gained the required
permission, and hung his works on the trunks of the palms. His
gallery was larger than most and appropriate considering his deep
reverence for nature.

The following year, Cayung headed for New York, with rolled up
canvases under one arm, to find his destiny in a place as
different from Ubud as one could possibly imagine. For a man who
loves nature, the contrasting lifestyle forced upon him by life
in the Big Apple must have required big adjustments.

He worked very hard at whatever he could find, and he found a
niche for himself, made friends and continued with his art and
writing in his spare time.

On New Year's Day 2000, he went to Broadway on a freezing
morning, and marked the occasion by standing in the street making
a finger painting.

Destiny intervened the same year when he met his wife
Jennifer, also an artist, at a life drawing session. Now they
live in Brooklyn with their two poodles, and Cayung has a steady
job again as a graphic artist in a large health food store. He
works in downtown Manhattan.

He was at work on the fateful morning of Sept. 11, 2001, not
too far from the World Trade Center. As a world altering tragedy
was occurring, he wrote in his e-mails to family and friends: "So
far, I am OK. The second tower has just collapsed".

This choice of words revealed how New Yorkers must have felt,
as they wondered what might happen next.

He did not want to discuss the negative aspects of that day
except to say, "Peoples' facial expressions are changed, perhaps
this includes myself. But I would rather die dancing, than die in
fear".

However he added: "The positive thing, from my point of view,
was that most of the urban New Yorkers became close and cared
about each other. We cared. We saw a long line of blood donors at
every hospital, people of all different colors and origins... New
York colors....like a new world of people who heard each other
calling".

Cayung said that it took him a while to find the scene now
known as PsyTrance, in New York.

"It is truly multicultural and everyone is equally accepted,
and it is a world free of falsity and consumerism. It's the only
place where you can see an Indonesian and an Israeli hugging each
other and eating together from the same plate.

"The people have a third eye in their heart. They are open
minded people who love nature."

He explained that PsyTrance was not the same as Rave, which is
often associated with "kids who want to escape from parents and
mess themselves up with drugs".

For him, PsyTrance functions are very different, mostly drug
and alcohol free and attended largely by people who prefer not to
abuse their mind and body with chemical drugs or alcohol.

He said he could leave his wallet on the table, go to the
dance floor and it would still be there, untouched, when he
returned.

Aligned with this PsyTrance world, Cayung's artistic
activities have stretched to enormous proportions. He now paints
"reflective UV Psy-art". His canvases have expanded to mural
size, sometimes around 8 meters x 3 meters, but averaging about 3
meters x 1 and a half meters. He paints works of Visionary Art,
with colors sensitive to UV light, which are used to decorate the
venues where PsyTrance dance parties are held.

The parties, which in tropical locations are held outdoors,
must usually be held indoors in big cities in latitudes like New
York where the summer is short.

However, the New York area still has several three day/three
night dance parties each summer. He regrets the modern trend that
it is becoming increasingly difficult in many countries to
organize the parties to dance in "Mother Nature", due to
opposition from local business establishments.

In New York, the flip side of this is that Cayung's art is
much in demand to decorate the indoor venues. His amazing
paintings are credited as "Atmosphere" on the PsyTrance website
advertisements for upcoming parties.

This year he has been invited to fly over to the West Coast
twice, so that his works could adorn the walls at PsyTrance Dance
parties on the other side of the country. His fame is spreading.

The style is psychedelic, transcendental and the subject
matter is deeply spiritual, containing beings from other worlds
and images from nature. It also draws on his deep respect and
identification with his Toba Batak heritage.

He seems to have awakened a sort of ancestral memory since he
arrived in New York. Along with motifs from Batak culture, art,
history and legend are other Asian motifs. One example is the
dragon painting, which is a beast as no one ever imagined.

"It's a magical dream that will always exist in the Asian mind
-- it will never be born and it will never die," said Cayung of
his dragon.

His ancestors' voices are also coming to him in the form of
vivid dreams which tell a story of a time long ago, concerning
Chinese traders, Buddhist monks, ocean voyages to India,
discoveries of virgin islands and more.

The dreams seem to tell the origins of the Batak tribes, whose
beginnings are still somewhat mysterious and indefinite even to
modern anthropologists. These dreams or visions have become a
book in progress.

According to Cayung, all of his art means nothing "unless
there are good and aware eyes to see it", so in that sense he
feels that all of his work is collaborative. For him, art is the
way to bridge the gaps created by the distance and diversity of
humankind.

"Let's open and melt, mirroring each other, flowing back into
our natural beliefs, which have been forcibly pushed from our
brains, leading us away from nature," he said. "Let's link and
become one peaceful human family. We should rely on each other
the same way that art needs our eyes and our eyes need art."

I-BOX:

Cayung's paintings are on the following websites:
* www.dayavision.50megs.com
* www.dreamcatcherstudio.net
* www.gallart.net/painters/cayung/siagian.html