No gray areas in the black and white art of Hanafi

By Mehru Jaffer

JAKARTA (JP): Hanafi believes there is no room for ifs and buts in his life. For he has simplified it all to black and white, and he refuses to take solace in gray areas.

What has to be done, has to be done, says the artist.

Even when he paints in color, the shades black and white are seldom far from his thoughts. For black and white have taught him great lessons in life. He has learned not to compromise, not to make excuses in life, if he can help it, and never to procrastinate despite hardship.

Above all, he knows not to just preach, but also to practice what he believes in.

It was not very long ago that Hanafi sat before a post office selling greeting cards he designed. Today he looks back on those times with pride and with no regrets. To make it easier for other younger struggling artists, he has made it a habit to donate 20 percent earned from each painting sold to a studio, which he has set up for all those who do not have the place or equipment to practice their art.

If it is true that the beliefs of the artist are bound to show in their art, then the art of Hanafi is indeed a reflection of what is on his mind. Born into a humble Central Javanese home in 1960, Hanafi says that he was always attracted to different acts of creativity. Despite few resources, he moved from Purworejo to Yogyakarta to study at the Arts School.

His first introduction to drawing came from a tattered magazine lying in the house. As a nine-year-old, he remembers looking through the outdated magazine and found himself returning to the same page again and again. Later he discovered that the artist whose drawing had attracted his attention as a child was none other than Zaini, one of the founders of modern Indonesian art.

Zaini has remained a constant inspiration in Hanafi's life as the abandon in each of the older painter's stroke helps him to rise above all bondage that man has created for himself in this world. His soul seldom fails to soar into endless ecstasy as he looks upon the watercolors of Zaini, who died in 1977.

When Irma Katimansah from the association for the promotion of young artists, and an admirer of Zaini, got to know Hanafi, it became her dream to exhibit the two painters together. Irma, a marketing executive and lover of art, has been going around the world trying to promote Indonesian art. But she found that few are interested because the impression internationally is that all Indonesian art is traditional.

By organizing "Zaini and Hanafi on Paper", an exhibition of 45 watercolors, Irma wants to state that modern art in this country is thriving; Hanafi's recent trip to Canada on a scholarship may help to back her belief. Irma wishes that the people at New York's Museum of Modern Art will one day get to see the work of Hanafi.

Hanafi does use colors, but black and white is what challenges him most, especially since he is a great admirer of Chinese ink painting. Besides, white maybe defined as the absence of color although it really is the presence of all the colors of the spectrum of light. It is a symbol of truth, purity, glory and the road to heaven as opposed to black, a reminder of darkness, mourning and the underworld.

In the same spirit, Hanafi staged a performance to inaugurate his painting exhibition where legendary actor Otik, dressed in white, sat statue-like, in a wheelchair in one corner of a floor that was covered by a black sheet measuring 30 square meters. Hanafi dressed in black pants and a white T-shirt lit candles and sprinkled jasmine buds and grains of rice over the black sheet.

Soon after, the actor wheeled his chair all over the black sheet, dropping himself down at the center and pulling the sheet from all sides to shroud himself within its black folds, emerging once again from the bowels of nowhere to strike at the gigantic gong that declared the exhibition open to the world.

What gradually emerged from the covers of the black sheet was a five-panel painting in black and white on the floor of the same size, a homage by Hanafi to the memory of Zaini. It is a symbol that he may have gone from this world, but has left behind his art for one and all to remember him by.

Zaini and Hanafi on Paper is in the main lobby of the Regent Hotel until June 12. For further inquiries, telephone 2523456.