Iman's works reflect yearning for natural environment
By R. Fadjri
YOGYAKARTA (JP): Woodcutting, an old technique, is thriving through the creative vision of artist Yamyuli Dwi Iman.
With simple expressions and the symbols of a traditional world, Iman conveys the changes people in an agrarian society are undergoing.
Iman, 36, a graduate of the Indonesian Institute of Arts' graphic arts department, has captured these changes through a conventional graphic arts medium.
"The themes of my graphic works are responses to contemporary problems that a traditional community is facing," he said.
The graphic works he is exhibiting now, through to Sept. 30, at Cemeti Gallery, Yogyakarta, strongly reflect his longing for a natural environment, and at the same time, his restlessness regarding the contemporary situation.
Iman's graphic works remain two dimensional, using a woodcut technique unique to Yogyakarta.
This technique, popular among Yogyakarta's graphic artists, is essentially a deviation from the standard norm of graphic arts. The duplications produced always yield different results in each edition.
In Iman's works, the element of tradition assumes greater prominence. Faces are drawn in a decorative style while objects are from traditional, everyday life.
They include masks, antique chairs, traditional dining sets, kerosene lamps and traditional children's toys.
Iman works on serious themes such as corruption, injustice and the irony of independence for commoners who remain poor, as well as frivolous themes such as the disappearance of traditional games of rural children.
For his theme on corruption, Menu Anti Korupsi (Anticorruption Menu), Iman put together 33 postcard-sized pictures with five different objects, printed in different editions.
There are different shapes: a kerosene lamp, a terra-cotta teapot, a rice cone inside a ceting, a plate containing tubers and petai (beans with a pungent odor, eaten raw and cooked). Could clinging to old essential values provide the anticorruption remedy?
It is strange that for such an important theme he does not use clamorous and mind-shocking expression.
Deriding
In Kursi dan Topeng (Chair and Masks), he cynically derides the bag of tricks which constantly comes with the behavior of those in power.
The theme is reflected through a red and blue antique chair, over which four different masks are hovering.
Another contemporary phenomenon is depicted in Gebyar Senjang (Glittering Gaps), a television running a dance program, with the inscription "Glittering in Millions".
Underneath the television is a telephone connection. A child is watching, holding a slingshot aimed at the television.
Iman is expressing his dislike of the popular interactive television-telephone quizzes. These quizzes offer cash prizes which, to rural people, are very large sums of money.
Village people can only watch; they cannot participate in the quizzes because they have no telephones.
"This is discriminatory, especially considering that the community is fed with the assumption that it is quite easy to win large sums of money. Low-class people can never have this opportunity," Iman said in exasperation.
In Tukang Sulap Sawah (Farmland magician) Iman further highlights the road toward what he sees as eventual consumerism through the change of rural farmland into housing complexes.
"A society may change physically," said Iman of the inevitable change, "but their traditional norms should remain," he added wistfully.
It is interesting to see Iman's strategy to get his messages across. A graphic artist whose works have been bought by many foreign collectors, he has arranged five titles, each comprising eight to nine editions of his small-sized graphic works.
His assumption is that a message will have stronger appeal for the public if it is more frequently conveyed.
He has been inspired by the mass communications techniques through advertisements or propaganda, through a row of the same posters or highly frequented broadcasts. It seems Iman has found at least one modern technique to work for a very good cause.