Marida Nasution: Another step on her artistic adventures

Carla Bianpoen, Contributor, Jakarta

As singer Ina "Ubiet" Nyak Raseuki stood in front of Marida Nasution's Blue Opera stage, the tones composed by new music master Tony Prabowo and given life by her unique voice filling the space of the new gallery at the National Museum, it was as if a world of the ethereal unfolded.

Images in pink, purple, yellow and bronze red, each standing in the shadow of a blue image on transparent blue Plexiglas, the rotating sculptures sitting on wooden chairs with smug expressions, and the portraits against the top of the wall at the far back; it all combined to appear like a theatrical drama on a contemporary stage.

Marida Nasution's orchestration of what she calls Opera Biru/Renjana (Blue OperaEmotions) is not only an unparalleled exhibition of graphic installation art and graphic art. More than that, it is an experience that finds its way deep into the soul.

Opera Biru/Renjana, Marida's fifth solo exhibition since 1991 and unfortunately running only a week until Feb. 12, is about the many layers of emotion, something she said is difficult to explain and cannot fully be observed.

Why blue?

"Blue for me is a symbol of the sky and water, of limitless space, just like the depth and the breath of the human soul," she said.

In 48 images of silkscreen on transparent blue Plexiglas, divided into four sections and set on a stage measuring 9 x 20 meters, made of 160 pale-blue squares each 15 centimeters high.

The Plexiglas sheets with the silkscreen colored images have been arranged in "doors" each having a sheet in blue and another color indicating a human emotion, thus producing a unique shade.

In each of the 24 "doors" there is a blue Plexiglass sheet with another color: purple for sadness and sorrow, pink for the emotion of love, bronze red for anger, and yellow for happiness.

The sheets have been divided in four rows, two left and two at the right, set in odd positions. In between are two rotating bases on which sculpted figures sit on low wooden chairs. The rotation symbolizes the constant flux of human emotion, while the individual sculptures represent the various human emotions.

It would not be Marida's exhibition if there were not also smaller works hanging on the wall. Indeed, in addition to the installation, 50 pieces of framed images made in silkscreen printing, etching and drawings fill the side walls of the space. As she continues exploring the technique of expression and the expressive potential of graphic art, Marida shows a heightened maturity in the lines of her etching, as evident in the expressive etching Kemarahan (Anger), and the white scratches shaping the temperamental figures on blue in Gulungan Emosi (Emotional Turmoil) and the articulated movement of the figure in Kerinduan (Longing).

She is revisiting the significance of colors, now taking from the naive, as seen in Suara dari Kebun (Voices of the Garden).

In the world of graphic art, the 47-year-old artist is a towering model of consistency and artistic integrity. While many of her peers jumped at the opportunity to follow the more lucrative trend to painting, Marida stuck to graphic art. It did not mean she did not explore other branches of art, but she never once deserted the idioms of her graphic beginnings.

She made her graphics an undeniable part of her innovations, even breaking through the usual by making it part of a new development in art -- installation art.

What makes this artist even more unique is the consistency with which she has held her solo exhibitions every three to four years, thus accounting to the wider public for her continuous progress. Her first solo show in 1991 was about color, picking up the environmental issue in 1994 with a show on trees. In her third solo show in 1997, she featured the marginalized and the forgotten in the urban context.

Her wonderful installation of colored street cleaners' images in silkscreen on sheets of Plexiglas seemed the beginning of a continuous adventure of stirring creativity. As she matured as a woman, the gender issue became her theme in 2001.

Of Woman's Dignity was a spectacular exhibition in which the main installation depicted women in three stages of life, with sculptures set in three pyramids made of transparent synthetic fiber rotating at different levels.

It seems Marida Nasution never falters, let alone stops, when it comes to making art. Her works becoming even more innovative and grander over time hardly suggest an artist who started art school because she was too frail to go long distances, and art school was closest to her house.

Because of her heart ailment and hearing impairment, her parents were very protective. But to her parents' and everyone else's surprise she switched from painting to graphic art and even purchased a machine for her personal use.

From the very start of her creative career, Marida only asks for assistance if technical complications prevent her from doing the task herself. Otherwise, she handles all technical procedures herself, loving the sensation of personal touches and the communicative vibrations during the process of creation.

With Opera Biru/Renjani still resounding, Marida's thoughts are already traveling to her next solo show, when she turns 50. No doubt we will all be in for another surprise.