Javanese cosmology colors Heri Dono's works

By Tedy Novan

YOGYAKARTA (JP): When climbing Mount Merapi in March, creator of fine art Heri Dono thought that if Indonesian artists had duly respected their cultural traditions, the environmental destruction and moral degradation would not be as bad as it is.

Then at Sultan Hamengkubuwono X's consent, he took home a truckload of earth from Kinahrejo village situated on the Merapi slope. He used the earth to make a monumental installation work he called Earth from Merapi.

The work, which he said represented the sociocultural reality in the Merapi area, was displayed in Yogyakarta city's north square and the Indonesia-France Institute between April 13 and April 27.

"The work is to serve as a reminder, especially to creators of fine art, that they should not neglect culture and nature," Heri says.

For Heri, the fifth of seven children, culture and tradition are crucial as far as it concerns the preservation of civilization, including environmental, sociopolitical and economical issues.

On Dec. 9, the 1987 alumni of Indonesian Fine Arts Academy in Yogyakarta won the US$20,000 Prince Claus Award 1998 from Holland. He is well-known for his innovation in creating the arts of drawing, installation and performance.

"I'm more interested in culture as a whole than in any specific art," he says.

Born in Jakarta in 1960, Heri is very much influenced by Javanese philosophy. He obtained the philosophy from his family. His father was formerly a bodyguard of Hartini Sukarno, wife of Indonesia's first president. He also learned the philosophy from the Yogyakarta public and puppet master Sukasman.

Heri says Javanese philosophy remains contemporary. For example, the old adage that people should always eling lan waspada (be alert and careful).

By heeding the advice, artists will always be aware of their natural phenomenon. By doing so they will not lose touch with nature, their source of inspiration.

Many artists use natural phenomena as mere inspirations for their works, paying little attention to its survival and to cultural realities.

"As a creator of fine art, I don't want to seek inspiration from natural phenomena but I want to be directly involved in the social realities," says Heri, who previously won the I Gusti Nyoman Lepad Prize from Sanggar Dewata Indonesia.

With Earth from Merapi, Heri means to remind people, especially Javanese, that they should not remain spellbound by the old philosophy about Merapi, the palace and the southern seas.

Adherence to the philosophy has wrought damage and destruction on the social and cultural climate of Yogyakarta, from Merapi down to the southern seas (Indian Ocean).

The beauty of Merapi, for example, has been increasingly exploited as a mere commercial spot where an increasing number of buildings overlooking the volcano have been constructed.

"When culture is diminished into a sheer commercial commodity, artists should stand up and fight through the medium of art," says Heri, a participant in the International Artist Exchange Program, Basel, Switzerland, from 1990 to 1991.

What is more important than a job in art and cultural, he says, is involving the public in the process, be it through painting, installation work or shows. Once this formula is put into practice, there will be no distance between the artist and the public enjoying the artwork. All would become part of the work.

In contemporary art in the West, he says, the art structure is a form of exclusivism unrelated to the cultural history of the nation's history. The truth is that although a culture is centuries old, it remains contemporary and is useful to develop the current culture.

When an art museum or gallery opens to public, what happens is exclusivism of the art because there is a distance between the artist and the public. The truth is that art is part of the omnipresent culture and not something to watch.

Heri's work titled The Drunkenness of Semar which he exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford in 1995 is a case in point. The exhibition, which themed Javanese culture and contemporary Indonesian sociopolitical issues, involved British lower-class citizens, such as the homeless and former convicts, in that they helped prepare the exhibition.

The involvement of the local community was necessary, he argues, as a symbol of Indonesian-British collaboration to promote culture. It also allowed the Indonesian artist to learn how the British perceive the arts. With this approach, Heri did not have to take along many people to help him prepare the exhibition.

Javanese culture and cosmology is the dominant color in most of his works. However, not all of his works can be categorized as traditional.

All the artworks he has exhibited in Austria, Switzerland, Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, Australia, U.S., Japan, India and Indonesia since 1988 are all innovations of the Javanese genre.

His paintings represent stories in Javanese mythology and current social reality. For example Semar, a God-man character in Javanese shadow puppetry, is presented without his trademark white tuft, large belly and crooked body. It is a brand-new Semar, but one that retains his old mannerisms.

He adopts the same approach to allude to social reality. Heri employs surrealistic figures to satirize discontent in society. To allude to democratization in Indonesia, he drew a condom on a 150cm by 120cm canvas in 1996. The painting is yet to be given a title.

Loving to travel by bike, Heri is close to the common people who he always involves in creating his artworks. He says that each person is a reflection of the culture in a given community.

"I don't believe that society should be divided into social classes. The artists and the people are supposed to enjoy the works as one."

Heri is consistent in choosing social realities as themes for his works. His monumental installation works demonstrate this consistency.

Some of his works have become the collection of Artoteek Museum in The Hague; Fukuoka Art Museum in Japan; der Kulturen Basel in Switzerland; Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane, Australia; Stedelijk Museum de Lakenhal in the Netherlands, Okinawa Art Museum in Japan and the National Museum of Modern Arts in Singapore.

Heri is planning to hold an "alliance project" in 2000 to bring together artists around the globe to promote traditional arts around the world.

"Art has to be part of the people's needs and there should be no territorial boundaries. The world community should be art- minded," he says.