'Indo' painter expresses cultural dilemma

By R. Fadjri

YOGYAKARTA (JP): Edith Bons is a painter whose heritage is anchored in two different worlds, but in whose creations the Indonesian part without doubt has the upper hand. This trait pervades her work, 30 examples of which are on show from April 4 to April 30 at the Cemeti Gallery, Yogyakarta.

Edith Bons employs a traditional Indonesian style or merges it with Western styles. She is both a Western and an Eastern artist. Such artists have a unique place in the Western art scene. They may, sociologically, not differ from their Western brethren, but psychologically they are often torn between Western and Eastern values.

The life of the "Indo", the name given to the offspring of a Dutch-Indonesian marriage, was not all that easy in colonial times. They led a life full of conflicting values and prejudice, constantly searching for their identity.

Prejudice was their lot in life during colonial times. They found themselves sandwiched between two very different cultures, confronted with racial prejudice, and a colonial heritage that they found hard to shed.

Edith Bons was born in Merauke, Irian Jaya in 1952. She graduated from the Academy of Various Arts in Minerva, Groningen, the Netherlands, where she settled down in 1962 with her parents at the age of ten. Indonesia was hardly talked about at home since speedy adaptation to the Dutch lifestyle was expected of Indos arriving from Indonesia.

The Indo propensity to ignore their Indonesian heritage has its cause in the Netherlands East Indies colonial period. Said Edith Bons: "Whenever my parents talked about Indonesia, they really meant the Netherlands East Indies, a country that is now long gone."

When the Dutch lost their power over Indonesia, the Indos who opted for Dutch citizenship faced a dilemma, particularly those born in the post-colonial era. On one hand, their economic needs were being met in Holland, but on the other hand their feelings were still linked to Indonesia. It is, therefore, not at all surprising that Edith Bons finds herself emotionally tortured every time Indonesia celebrates its independence on Aug. 17.

"Independence Day is a very challenging day for me. I have the opportunity to feel as an all-Indonesian person, which, in reality, I can never become," she lamented bitterly.

She wanted at first to go to the Far East, and not to Indonesia. She had wanted to go to India or Nepal. Coming to Indonesia was more of an accident. She settled down in Yogyakarta and then in Jepara, Central Java, in 1985. She forged friendships with Indonesian contemporaries. She even had an exhibition with Nindityo Adipurnomo, another artist living in Yogyakarta. Since then she has become more aware of her Indonesian heritage, both personally and artistically.

It was in Indonesia that she found a form of expression in traditional art like wayang, batik and carving.

Edith Bons works with all sorts of materials, like carton, palm leaves and paint, traditional Indonesian touches in combination with techniques of Western art. Apart from painting, she also uses other forms like collage, gluing together Indonesia's traditional art such as pictures of farmers or Dewi Sri, the rice goddess of Java and Bali, shadow puppets, batik cloths or the black-and-white checker cloths of Bali.

Take her 1994 work entitled The Land, for instance. The work has pastoral pictures attached to a background of black-and-white checks treated to give the whole picture a misty look. The Balinese cloth could also be seen as an abstract form of paddy fields. On the left, right and upper part of the work, thick broken lines in white, yellow and red dominate. The picture is painted on a piece of carton and framed in black and white, exuding a nostalgic atmosphere of Indonesian village life.

The decorative style of Edith Bons' paintings is difficult to ignore. It is very evident in her painting called Under The Papaya Trees. Round shapes in yellow, blue and red on a lilac background resemble batik ornaments made with the jumputan dyeing technique. Then there is her work called Matahari I, in which a snake encircles the canvas' edge, ornate in a yellow and green triangle motif. In the center of the canvas, an abstract red sun is simmering, surrounded by spiral shapes. It depicts nature awash in sunshine, green vegetation and wild beasts.

Edith Bons uses Eastern symbols in combination with Dutch ones which can be observed in one of her works featuring Dewi Sri, a batik ornament and a shadow puppet facing a tulip and a windmill. These symbols seem to express her dilemma, standing as she does between two cultures. This can also be seen in Gembala (1994), featuring a cross with the head of Semar, an Eastern and Western symbol. Warna Biru Yang Hilang (The Blue Color That Disappeared) stresses even more the dilemma of the Indo, symbolized in a golden hill with two crosses on the left. On top of the hill, two shadow puppets are in a challenging stance, while a broad blue line stretches from one corner to the other under the hill. It is as if Edith Bons wanted to say that Dutch power was torn away with the blue line on Aug. 17 1945, leaving only the red and white. To someone who can either become Indonesian or Dutch, it might denote that a part of themselves is lost forever.

"Indos will always find their identity squeezed in between two races. They will try to live between two cultures without priorities for either one," said Helena Spanjaard, a keen observer of Dutch art, in a brochure available at the exhibit.

A sense of longing, romanticism, a search for identity, tie up Edith Bons and her contemporaries to the culture of their Indonesian forebears. And to enthusiasts of Western art, Edith Bons and other artists of Indo parentage have generously enriched the form of Western art.