Exhibition puts tourism under the microscope

By Tjahjono Ep.

YOGYAKARTA (JP): It was a quiet morning at Via-via cafe on Jl. Parangtritis. Several employees busied themselves preparing meals probably ordered by foreign tourists a day or two before.

A woman looked at a photobox created by J. Ulis, a 28-year-old student from the Indonesian Art Institute in Yogyakarta. She smiled, shook her head and went back to her seat for breakfast.

The cafe, which is popular among Western tourists visiting the ancient city, is hosting a photobox exhibition with the odd title Photobox -- Danger, Hot Air. Opened on Jan. 10, the show will run for three months at the cafe on Jl. Prawirotaman 24B, Yogyakarta.

Tourism is the main theme, raising the dialectic of an industry so often obscured by financial concerns. All six works on display focus on human realities in tourism.

Ulis said he was inspired by the fact that tourism has always been dominated by organizers' greed for money and that its success is usually measured in terms of profits.

He believed tourist authorities and the public alike treat foreign tourists as "economic commodities", and they are spoilt with cultural exoticism.

In Ulis' view, everyone is a "tourist" when moving from one place to another, regardless of the distance. The movement has cultural implications because of the contact experienced in the journey from one community to another, culturally different one.

He illustrates his view in a photobox in which three foreign tourists happily riding bikes wave at three bulls. Two of the bulls with sensual lips respond with a smile, and the other does not care.

Another work shows an indigenous child lying on a bottle of imported insect repellent. The child look down with amazement at a middle-aged tourist carrying a similar bottle.

In another, a foreign tourist uses a bunch of twigs to beat another tourist who is naked. Another two tourists cry: "Danger, hot air."

Ulis also tells of the young women venture abroad for employment, with titles like Mother pray for my journey, My life behind the wheel and Your job, go on business, go home because homesick.

The show is unique on several counts. Held at a cafe belonging to Belgian Mie Cornoedus, all the works are packed with cultural criticism. In Via-via cafe, defined by the typical architecture of a tropical house, a cultural dialectic takes place between the indigenous Ulis and the Western tourists who visit every day.

Ulis shows an innovative way of presenting his artistic creations. His six photoboxes are presented in collage. The photographs printed on orthofilm are collaged on transparent mica and bathed in neon light from the opposite direction.

It is a breakthrough in presenting photographs. By manipulating composition and the shape of objects, the pictures are highly eye-catching.

The technique is widely used in picture manipulation for the advertising industry. Ulis, a promising artist from West Kalimantan, adopts the innovation for high quality works of art.

However, Ulis still sticks to the conventional and has yet to move onto further experimentation.