Hilda's groundbreaking ceramics in retrospect

Hilda's groundbreaking ceramics in retrospect

Carla Bianpoen, Contributor, Jakarta

"The approach to ceramics should start from basic knowledge of
the material and from making pottery. Only thereafter can a
ceramist proceed toward another level." This is what Hilda
Soemantri, Indonesia's foremost fine art ceramist, scholar,
lecturer and founder of the ceramic section of IKJ used to tell
her students.

The truth of this rule is unfolded in a current retrospective
display of her exquisite work at Cemara-6 Gallery, Jakarta.
Thirty pieces in raku clay and glazes, combined with mixed media,
give evidence of the consistency and integrity of an artist who
took ceramics in this country to the level of modern art.

Representing the stages of her interaction with clay,
incorporating events and accidents into a new ceramic presence,
the story of Hilda's involvement over more than 30 years with
clay is an account of the artist's passage from exploration to
revelation. Her groundbreaking oeuvre testifies to deep human
emotion and refined artistic creation.

Widely considered the mother of modern ceramic art, Hilda
Soemantri was the founder of the ceramics department at the
Jakarta Institute of Fine Arts (IKJ), focusing on modern ceramics
based on both craftsmanship and new images. She is also known for
her quiet courage, the first Indonesian artist ever to introduce
installation art here (1976), and a scholar -- the first-ever
female art historian to obtain a PhD degree abroad. Holding a
solo exhibition in 1978, she was the first woman artist to do so.

Her relationship with clay started in the 1960s when she
entered the ceramic section of the department of fine art and
design at the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB). In those
days, it was a rarity for women to study art, let alone ceramic
art. She became fascinated by the nature of clay, its character
in the course of breaking up -- its cracks, edges, flaws and
fragments -- and the interplay between clay's fluid, yielding
response and its grainy, weighty resistance. Clay became the
medium for exploring her raison d'etre.

Hilda reveals she works without preconceived ideas, allowing
the feel of the texture against her bare hands to determine the
shape. Searching for truth within reality, she lets the medium
explore and trace experiences, memories and visions stored in her
subconscious, and intertwine with the forces occurring in nature.

Gradually she moved away from the usual stoneware vessels and
pottery of her early works, shocking the world of art in 1976
with an installation.

Even more daring was the use of ceramics and broken pieces of
ceramic in the installation that sought to highlight the
compelling transformative power of clay. Only in hindsight did
many come to understand the profoundly contemplative meaning of
the installation that pondered a person's life and the process by
which broken pieces ultimately come together at the Center of all
Life.

By infusing clay with abstract expressionism, Hilda Soemantri
broke through the conventional and enlarged existing perceptions
of art, particularly ceramic art in Indonesia.

Her works gained a profound sensuality. Staggering in their
refined sensitivity, the abstract lines, curves, cracks and holes
in her profoundly delicate works suggest the artist's increasing
sense of the transcendental, which to appreciate indeed requires
a thorough understanding of the material, meticulous precision,
but above all, a cohesive, natural feel.

Fascinated by the mountains of Victoria (Canada), where she
was an artist in residence giving lectures to the university, her
works of that time present images in which the beauty of
Victorian mountains, the cosmic mountain of ancient myth and the
spirit of Javanese Gunungan (the tree of life), seem to melt into
one compelling power. This is particularly tangible in the series
of the "Cosmic Mountain", which, except for some bright colors,
is dominated by somber hues with just a golden dot or stripe to
light up the view.

Hilda's interest in art, however, is not limited to her own,
as evident from her dissertation The Terracotta Art of Majapahit,
which she wrote for her PhD in art history at Cornell University
and was published under the same title. The Majapahit was a Hindu
kingdom around the 14th century, stretching from East Java to
Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia and beyond.

"It is her great virtue that she restores the missing
dimension: the close-at-hand, the intimate, the familiar feel of
the everyday," states Stanley J. O'Connor, her mentor at Cornell
University and a luminary of Southeast Asian studies, adding,
"she has demonstrated that the small-scale and marginal can
become the central and tremendous." John Misic, art historian at
the National University of Singapore, considers the book a highly
reliable resource for scholars.

Hilda was born in Jakarta in 1945. She grew up in the
Netherlands, pursued her secondary and university education in
Indonesia, obtained her Master's from Pratt Institute in New York
and received her PhD in art history from Cornell University. She
is currently very ill, but was, nevertheless, able to oversee the
selection for her retrospective exhibition, and there are high
hopes she will attend the opening on Dec. 17, at 5 p.m.

A video will be showing works that are not in the exhibition,
including her groundbreaking installations. Selected works and
the Majapahit book will be for sale.

Hildawati Soemantri untuk Seni Rupa Modern Indonesia (Hildawati
Soemantri for Indonesia Modern Fine Art); Cemara-6 Gallery, Jl. HOS
Cokroaminoto 9-11, Menteng, Central Jakarta, Dec. 17 through Dec.
27, 2002; To be formally opened by Prof. Dr. Fuad Hassan on Dec. 17
at 5 p.m.; Information: Cemara-6 Gallery, attn. Ms Etty;
Tel.: 324 505, 391 1823