Indonesian children's art show travels U.S.

Indonesian children's art show travels U.S.

JAKARTA (JP): Curator and critic Joseph Fisher, who played a
leading role in the KIAS exhibition of Modern Indonesian Art that
toured the United States in 1990 in conjunction with the Festival
of Indonesia, has once again curated an exhibition that is sure
to stimulate a lively interest in artists of Indonesia.

This time round, however, Fisher has chosen to focus not on
established painters but on the children of Indonesia as artists.
In choosing to focus on children's art, Fisher says that he aimed
to present "children as creators, citizens and important
contributors to society, thus offering a needed alternative to
viewing children as objects, consumers and victims of a world
chosen for them by adults."

The exhibition, titled The Giant Who Swallowed the Moon:
Indonesian Children's Art from Java and Bali, first opened in
1994 at the Museum of Children's Art in Oakland, California and
by the end of 1995 will have appeared in venues ranging from the
Children's Museum of Manhattan, New York to the Meadows Museum of
Art in Shreveport, Louisiana and the Honolulu Academy of Arts.

Many well-known folk themes are illustrated in the show. These
include the title piece that "depicts folk behavior in response
to the eclipse of the moon or the sun" as well as paintings
featuring the Kancil, or "Mousedeer" tales and the legend of Joko
Tarub. Other paintings feature cultural events like traditional
marriages and cremations, the Jatilan "hobby horse" dance,
performances of shadow theater or the celebration of Idul Fitri.

While nearly all of the paintings in the exhibition are
"traditional" in the sense of aiming at some form of
representationalism, many paintings reveal a boldness in the use
of color and line that might well offer food for thought to
artists of the older generation. Some paintings, like Veronica
Triyasni Dewi's Women Making Batik Cloth, are marked by a
sophisticated balancing of contrasting elements of form into a
unified composition that would be the envy of many an
abstractionist.

Fisher began to work on selecting works for the show in 1993,
at the same time that he was completing work on his now published
The Folk Art of Java (Oxford University Press, 1994). He dreams
of bringing the show to Indonesian venues in 1997. He says that
he hopes to stimulate further interest in younger creators of
Indonesia, noting that "their creativity is nurtured by their
ready access to a still-intact traditional culture and an
educational system that allows them the space and uninterrupted
time to expand their creativity."

Major contributors to the show include A. Hari Sentosa,
director of the Sanggar Melati Suci in Yogyakarta, Nyoman Rudana
of the Rudana Gallery in Ubud, Bali and Agung Rai of the Agung
Rai Gallery, also in Ubud.

Sponsors include Yayasan Nusantara Jaya, Chevron, Inc. ,
Consulates of the Republic of Indonesia in San Francisco, Los
Angeles, New York and Houston and the Indonesian Embassy in
Washington D.C.

-- Tom Hunter