Intu's dream comes true at prestigious French art school

Intu's dream comes true at prestigious French art school

By Kunang Helmi

PARIS (JP): Everybody wants their dream to come true. Recent
art graduate Agni Klintuni Boedhihartono, known as Intu, realized
her's by using them in her art.

Her works are among those on display at the prestigious
L'Ecole Nationale Supirieure des Beaux Arts (Ensba) on the banks
of the River Seine. The 1999 art graduate's exhibition, curated
by Jean-Louis Froment, was officially opened on March 6 and runs
until April 23.

Intu's Indonesian dream series for her final exams was judged
to be one of the 26 best works chosen for the show, out of 102
exam candidates. Eight were foreign students, of whom two were
from Asia. After the opening ceremony, art critics judging the GS
art prize (sponsored by the company Gras Savoye), chose the
winner of this year's award.

During the week-long preparations for the graduate's show, the
energetic daughter of anthropology professor Beodhihartono and
Ibu Andri, professor of art and design at Jakarta's Trisakti
University, covered a 3-by-7 meter wall panel with finely
penciled drawings. The dreams she had during the week were
principally of Indonesia, more specifically of the Mentawai
islands, where she spent two months doing research for the
Bougainville expedition at the Musee de L'homme. Feminine curves
and feathery shapes, filled in with delicate details,
characterized this mural.

Intu began her dream series in 1999: "Everyday I try to
capture my dreams in drawings. This is what one calls 'work in
progress'. At the same time, I have also kept a diary of all the
different voyages I have undertaken in the course of my studies
and cultural exchange projects, like those to Australia, Canada,
Cuba and Mentawai. Multiculturalism is very important for my
work. I consider my dream drawings to depict the voyages I
undertake during my dreams while reflecting the thoughts and
souvenirs I experience discovering the world."

Intu, the only Indonesian graduate here, was born in 1971 in
Jakarta and came to France because, as she pointed out at the
opening, "For me Paris is the center of the art world!". This
conviction gave her the force to pass the stiff entrance exams,
in which she was competing against over 1,000 fellow candidates.

She was accepted at Ensba in 1996 after having obtained a
preparatory degree at the national art school in Dijon. Parallel
to her art studies, she also studied ethnology at the University
VII of Paris, where she obtained her M.A. in 1998. She is now
preparing her Phd. in visual and sound anthropology at the same
university.

This young Indonesian participated in a performance during the
1995 show Fluxus at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Marseille
as well as in the Mail Art show in the Grangier Post in Dijon.
Intu has also taken part in an Ensba show Gericault -
Contemporary Points of View and in an exhibition at the Design
and Art Gallery of the University of British Columbia in
Vancouver. She is currently planning her next project, a joint
show with her parents at Taman Ismail Marzuki in Jakarta.

Professor Pierre Buraglio played a central role in Intu's
studies. Two of her fellow students under Buraglio's tutorage
were also chosen to exhibit their work. This professor was one of
the first in France to emphasize the importance of the support on
which a work of art is based. New materials, including different
kinds of paper in various media, were used in his artistic
experiments. For instance, in the realm of sculpture, the base on
which the work rests upon is given the same consideration as the
work itself. Buraglio also encourages his students to take a
multimedia approach and incorporate photography and video in
their work as well.

Among the conceptual exam projects presented, Great Britain's
Rebecca Young's light installation, Book of the Sky, part of the
series Camera Obscura, won the important 10th GS art prize for
young creation. Although Intu does not always appreciate
conceptual art, she agreed this work merited the award. "I
generally find conceptual work too universal and anonymous
without any particular characteristics. However, her work using
daylight denotes a very personal and poetic approach to art."

Later this year at the Musee de l'Homme Parisians will be able
to see Intu's photographs and drawings she made while on the
Mentawai islands for the Bougainville Expedition. Meanwhile, she
is preparing for another ethnographic expedition in Indonesia in
April.