Marida Nasution: Another step on her artistic adventures

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.