Heri's art to be shown in Japan

By Ahmad Solikhan

YOGYAKARTA (JP): The becak, a three-wheeled pedicab, is a pollution-free and traditional means of transportation. If you ever ride a becak, you may feel your spirits soar.

For artist Heri Dono, a becak can be transformed into a multidimensional artwork.

Heri, one of the country's most prominent contemporary artists, has turned a brand new pedicab into an installation art piece called The Golden Carriage.

This piece will be displayed for three months at the Kirishima Open-Air Museum in Kagoshima, Japan, starting mid-April 2001. The exhibition will feature sculptures and installation pieces by 70 artists from Asian, European and American countries.

Some of the participants displaying their installation works are Richard Long and Yoko Ono, the widow of John Lennon. Those exhibiting their sculptures will include Isamu Noochi and Niki de Shint/Phaue and many others.

The theme of the exhibition, organized in conjunction with the opening of the museum, is titled, The atmosphere of materialism in the life of the community in relation to its culture and nature.

To prepare for this prestigious exhibition, Heri has created a number of art pieces using various media, including fiberglass, pedicabs, unbleached cotton fabric, rattan, bamboo, etc.

It took the artist around three months to complete his tasks. One of his stunning installation pieces is a pedicab, which he describes as a "golden carriage", with an armless driver made of fiberglass. The statue of the driver is wrapped in cotton like a robot or a mummy. His face bears a taut expression and a blank gaze in his eyes expressing his agony and never-ending suffering.

A device producing a heartbeat sound is placed on the chest and connected to a speaker placed inside the body of the statue. The two wings of the golden carriage flap following the rhythm of the heartbeat, mechanically controlled by an electronic device.

Meanwhile, a sculpture of a dog's head is found on the passenger seat of the pedicab, its eyes open wide and its muzzle producing a barking sound, positioned in readiness to pounce upon anything standing in the way so as to ensure that the carriage can gather speed.

"I worked on this carriage installation for 3 weeks with the help of three persons. The idea came to me about 6 years ago," said Heri, who has set as his target participating in 12 overseas exhibitions every year.

Winner of the Unesco Prize 2000, Heri would like to get across through this installation work a message that pedicabs survive despite the existence of more modern means of transportation.

What is really happening now is that many people are dreaming of creating a pollution-free and environmentally friendly means of transportation. From Heri's point of view, a becak driver has a greater moral worth than those driving high-tech but polluting cars.

It is indeed interesting to talk about the use of a pedicab as a medium of installation art. In this piece, where the dog is the passenger in the pedicab, Heri does not mean to place an animal on the same level as a human being. He wants to emphasize that earning a living as a pedicab driver is not a mean job, especially when employment opportunities are scarce.

"Every time I ride in a pedicab, I feel as if I were spiritually flying," said Heri, who also won the Prince Claus Award in 1998.

He said that the upcoming exhibition of sculptures and installation pieces was being held at the request of Prof. Akita Tatehata and Prof. Fumio Nanjo, both Japanese art curators.

"I'm the only Indonesian asked to participate in such a highly acclaimed international art exhibition," said Heri, who is a graduate of the Indonesian Institute of Arts in Yogyakarta.

Heri's installation piece is interesting as it shows that there is an artist who cares about the use of traditional means of transportation and boldly proclaims so in other countries. Art lovers will be surprised to find out that The Golden Carriage is pulled by a human being rather than horses. And the irony bites home when one realizes that the passenger is but a dog. It may be Heri's intention to satirize the current situation, in which everything is topsy-turvy and upside-down.

This work lays bare Heri's open and free expression through his installation art pieces in order to improve his bargaining position. As the young art critic Adi Wicaksana put it in his paper titled Fine Art like Fried Items, Speculators and the Merit of Sly Tricks on the occasion of Widodo's 8th solo painting exhibition from Feb. 4 through Feb. 24, 2001 in Yogyakarta, many artists, for a variety of reasons, tend to acquiesce in the wishes of art dealers. This, he said, would indirectly kill the idea which the artist was seeking to express. However, he went on, there were also artists trying to shape the taste of the market using their own references and employing sophisticated tactics and tricks, usually underlaid by principles that could not be bought, just as in the case of Heri Dono.

In the case of The Golden Carriage, art aficionados are free to interpret and constructively criticize the work. As long as the artist does not cling to commercialization of his work and steadfastly and purely expresses his ideas through his work, Indonesia's art development will surely become a point of reference for foreign fine artists.