Davina: A refreshing look at changes in Bali

Davina: A refreshing look at changes in Bali

By Jean Couteau

DENPASAR (JP): It has been seventy years now since Bali was
discovered by foreign painters. Their approach is usually
aesthetic and exotic. They appropriate images of the island and
make it an object of idyllic consumption: a paradise. They thus
prevent Bali -- or rather the visual discourse on Bali -- from
entering into modernity.

Davina Stephens belongs to a new generation of painters which
is shaking this stilted image of the island. She never
'discovered' Bali. Bali was instead inbred in her.

Born a New-Zealander and the daughter of a 'hippie' from the
happy 70s, she spent the key years of her childhood, between 6
and 12, in Kuta, attending the ceremonies on the beach and going
to school with the young Balinese. She was thus shaped by the new
Bali in the making.

To her there was never real meaning in the word exoticism nor
was there a perceived conflict between tradition and modernity.
There is simply life and its changing ways and surroundings.

This daughter of Kuta, this witness of the new, global Bali is
now exhibiting her works for one month from Sept. 21 to Oct. 28
at the Ganesha Gallery of the Four Seasons Hotel in Jimbaran
Bali. Golf courses and offerings, beach boys and Western
tourists, peddlers and coca-cola, she is presenting the Bali no
one wants to see: the changing Bali.

These observations have been made possible by Davina's
particular mix of personal experience and talent. She has not
only resided in Bali. She went to high-school in India before
studying design in New York. She now regularly visits France
where she has held several exhibitions. Not yet thirty years old,
she has no identity qualms.

The world which was her childhood playground is now her home.
One day she is drinking wine in a Parisian cafe and the following
day she is at the beach with Balinese friends before going to
India to attend a Kathakali. And she does this naturally, her
curiosity being existential rather than abstract and
intellectual. She is a traveler and artist of a new, global world
which she not so much questions as grasps.

This easy going approach to life inspires all of her works.
She never wanted to 'express herself', within the framework of
contemporary art. She started her career in a humble way, by
making textile designs, thus manipulating forms and colors
without having to deal with the avant-garde question: how to be
in the new.

Her first paintings were inspired by the flowers, feathers and
other decorative objects she used to make her textiles. Then she
started painting cars, Harley Davidsons and other individual
objects from her Kuta background, and suddenly, two years ago, it
was the contrast and changes of the world around her which came
to the tip of her brush, first Bali, where she still spends much
of her time, then France, India, the States, and all of the
places she visits now and then.

Davina paints spontaneously, from the heart, in a manner which
reminds us of Pop Art, neo-figuration, naive art and a gentle
Combas. She owes nothing to any of these though. If there is a
debt it is indirect and it probably owes more to comic books and
the flat colors of the Balinese Penestanan painters than to any
Western artist or school.

Davina's exhibit comprises both water colors and oil
paintings. She is by far much freer in the use of oil. Her water
color pieces are often drab-colored and tend to focus on
decorative topics such as beach scenes and ceremonies.

In her oil paintings, however, both the color and the theme
come to life, and the composition is more complex: Paradise in
One has side by side a golfer, a woman carrying offerings, a
temple, a jumbo jet, and a Kuta sunset.

All in one, thus, presents both the cliches and the reality,
matter-of-factly, in a non judgmental way. Legian Beach Cottages
is more metaphorical: Two youths are seen surfing while a third
one is drowning among objects of modern consumption: a mobile
phone, a water bottle etc. "Welcome to Bali" is a depiction of
the island's daily reality: a temple with a warung coffee stall
in the background, two youths playing football in the middle, and
a young surfer apparently trying to catch the attention of a
nearby Western woman.

Davina's best work and, I hope, a preview of the future
direction of her creativity, is a reflection on the fate of the
world called Global Challenge, featuring, seen from above and in
lively colors, representatives of the main human groups gathered
around a table and gambling with money, religion, nature, drugs,
etc.

There is even a painting representing the former president
Soeharto on his Harley Davidson, together with Arafat, Habibie
and a Balinese priest, the latter two also riding a motorbike.
The painting was made before the fall of Soeharto though.
Therefore it is non-committal.

Davina is still just at the start of her career. The
casualness of her unburdened nature adds to her strong, natural
sense of color and promises to make her a significant artist with
an original message.

If there is something she should be wary of it is "naive art",
for which there is an important market, and with which her manner
shows some similarity, both in the subjects chosen and in the
finishing of the works.

The artist is far from naive, however. She 'knows', even
though it is intuitive, what she sees and represents. And what
she sees with her open, spontaneous eyes is a transient,
multicultural world in which people communicate with each other
mainly by exchanging 'things' or going places rather than by
exchanging ideas. She is an early witness to the coming of the
post-modern world.

She also gives a truer depiction of present day Bali than all
of her Balinese contemporaries, most of whom, because they
continue seeing themselves through the eyes of tourists when they
don't avoid figuration altogether, refuse to face the reality of
their changing island.

Davina would be a good example to demonstrate that foreigners
still have their say in Bali, if she were really' a foreigner. As
her life and works testify, she is as much a 'modern Balinese' as
any Balinese painter and peasant. She is the forerunner of a new,
multicultural identity and art.