Hildawati, a portrait of eminence

Hildawati, a portrait of eminence

Carla Bianpoen, Contributor, Jakarta

Warm applause welcomed Hildawati Soemantri at her retrospective
exhibition at the Cemara-6 Gallery here on Dec. 17. Friends,
admirers and VIPs from the art world came to pay homage to a
person who has dedicated over 30 years to the education and
development of art in this country.

Indeed, Hilda must be accorded a place in the history of
Indonesian modern art. As she started using clay as her medium of
personal expression, she brought ceramics from the realms of a
utilitarian craft into the abstract and expressive stage of
modern art. A person of many firsts, she is the first female
Indonesian scholar of art history with a Ph.D degree from abroad,
and she filled the gap left by other scholars of ancient Javanese
art by shedding light on the terracotta figurines of the
Majapahit Kingdom, one of the largest kingdoms in Southeast Asia,
seated in East Java. She boldly introduced installation art when
the term was still alien, even to many of her peers.

Working with clay is not for every artist, but for some reason
she chose to enter the department of fine arts and design at the
Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), although her fascination
with ancient Javanese art would have given her a better chance at
archaeology. Ever since her high school years, the various
temples of Central Java had held her in their grip and she often
visited the National Museum: "I would look with wonder at the
massive sculptures in the National Museum," she reveals, "and
ponder the driving force that made their materialization
possible."

Her high school visits to the temples had a lasting impact on
her mind and soul. Even as she made modern art her main
preoccupation, she would return to the world of ancient Javanese
art at the end of the day, to replenish her spirit with the
treasures of her ancient heritage.

Clay then became the medium par excellence in which to seek
the truth of her life's realities. Feeling the clay, its texture,
tracing the course of its demise -- its cracks, edges, flaws and
fragments -- all led her to the dimmed corners of her
subconscious, and intertwining with occurrences in nature, she
ultimately arrived at the realms of the contemplative,
transcending into the ethereal, sometimes alluding to the
austerity of Zen, the awesome power or the serene majesty of the
mountains.

When asked, Hilda replies that the series of Gunungan, or
Cosmic Mountain (1998), is her favorite. The time in which she
created the series also stands as the most enjoyable in her
creative life. During 1996-98, she was a sessional lecturer, and
an Orion Fellow at the Department of Art History, University of
Victoria.

The most extraordinary in the person of Hilda Soemantri is
that she excelled both in modern ceramic art and as a scholar of
ancient Javanese art who highlighted the figurines neglected by
previous scholars, and placed them in the context of ancient
Javanese art as a whole. The book titled Majapahit Terracotta
Art, published by the Ceramic Society in 1997, is appreciated as
a useful and reliable resource that might lead other scholars to
undertake new studies.

Hilda is a very private person. Dolorosa Sinaga, a noted
sculptor and one-time colleague at the Jakarta Arts Institute,
(IKJ) says Hilda prefers listening rather than talking, seeking
solutions rather than entertaining fierce confrontation, and she
is firm in matters of principle. A case in point deals with a
student's art work using men's underwear, which was to be
displayed in the IKJ exhibition space. Hilda flatly refused to
allow it. Vulgarity was not reconcilable with education -- full
stop.

To her students, she is an instructor who combines strong
discipline with a warm and gentle heart, and is a friend who was
available to help at any time. Lydia Poetri, a ceramic sculptor,
reveals how Hilda sent an office boy to "fetch" her when she
tried to play truant. Lydia says she owes her unquenchable love
for ceramics to Hilda Soemantri, her guru, colleague and friend.
Hilda may look as hardened as clay after firing at high
temperatures, but in fact, she is gentle to the core and
enjoyable in every respect.

Hilda was born in Jakarta in 1945. She grew up in the
Netherlands and pursued her secondary and tertiary education in
Indonesia. Her fascination with ancient Javanese art almost made
her choose archaeology as her major, but she decided instead to
become a ceramist and entered the Department of Fine Arts at ITB,
graduating in 1969. She married an architect working in Jakarta,
and so moved to the capital city and became involved in
administrative and educational matters at the IKJ.

Pursuing further studies on a Fullbright scholarship, she left
for Rhode Island and obtained her Master's degree of Fine Arts at
the Pratt Institute on Long Island. Back in Indonesia, she
lectured at the IKJ, and established a studio of ceramic art with
an emphasis on ceramic craft-making skills as a basis for modern
ceramic art. She has served as Secretary and First Dean of the
School of Arts at IKJ.

In the past three years, the cancer that had begun to eat away
at her body a decade ago grew ever more severe, and almost left
her immobile. However, as is exemplified in her retrospective
exhibition, rigidity of form does not mean rigidity of
expression, and the fire of the kiln still blazes in her eyes.