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.