Javanese cosmology colors Heri Dono's works

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.