Nyoman cleanses the world through art

By Jean Couteau

DENPASAR (JP): It is not often that art work strikes one as unique, great, eternal. This is why we critics are such masters of creating complicated sentences and ambiguous words. We too often avoid making judgments.

But great works do speak. And speak they did in the case of Nyoman Erawan's Cleansing of the World installation performance, a stunning reinvention of a Balinese ritual as a magical contemporary show.

Bali is famous for its great rituals: big bamboo structures, colored banners symbolizing the gods and direction of the wind, and multiple utensils and offerings representing one or other of the great principles of Balinese Hinduism: Rwabhinneda (union of opposites), Panca Mahabhutta (five elements), Punarbhawa (wheel of life) etc.

These symbols, organized into rituals, are "brought to life" in collective events such as cremations, temple festivals, exorcisms. They are at the core of the magic of Balinese culture.

Nyoman Erawan's art works are rooted in this culture. In the Indonesian art circle he has long been known as one of the best, and most authentic, manipulators of "native" symbols.

And, of course, what always strikes one in his works is the play of symbolic configurations involving Hindu-Balinese concepts, even when the results look "abstract" to an outsider's eyes.

This peculiar talent has won him praise, invitations abroad and even the cover picture in Astri Wright's book: Soul, Spirit and Mountain. Erawan applies his talent in several ways.

As a painter he mostly creates works on the themes of death and cosmic decay: bluish paintings with burn scars and checkered black and white cloth with the round shape of Chinese coins or other symbols.

These paintings have won acclaim at many exhibition in Jakarta and abroad. But it is in three-dimensional installations that Erawan is most at ease, creating and undoing the "boat of the dead souls", or last year's Herb of Life with Balinese symbols and colors.

This time, though, Erawan is going farther; he is creating, on the occasion of Earth Day, a cleansing ritual, as if he were a "prophet" preparing for a new religious purpose.

Occupying a 60-square-meter area above a small river, the show starts at night from a high bamboo platform decorated with the colors of the Gods of the universe. From behind a white cloth appears the dancing shadow of the gunungan or cosmic mountain: the symbol of life.

Suddenly, Erawan appears, ripping through it and heading downstairs toward a pool of mud (the Panca Mahabhuta five elements), set up in the middle of the stream, where he bathes himself.

Man, symbolized by a tall structure of white cloth, is thus born from the meeting of spirit and matter. Then Erawan dances back and forth carrying and throwing away branches entwined with ropes symbolizing the 10 Hindu senses. He is fighting with man's desires.

He shapes small figurines of mud -- his awareness of the principles of the world (TriLoka and Tri Hita Karana) -- before bathing himself in the river and being ritually cleansed by a priest. Man is thus reborn and liberated, as is the world.

An extraordinary rite of life. The magic of Bali synthesized and reborn through the talent of a single man.

That is, of course, an extraordinarily feat. Erawan is taking upon himself what has been, until now, the burden of all Balinese people: to create "meaning" through religious beauty.

With this performance, the Balinese accept what would be impossible almost anywhere else: that an individual creator revamps the symbols of his religion. Erawan is behaving less like an artist and more like a demiurge; beyond the arts, beyond religion, somewhere in the field of absolute creation.

Erawan's Cleansing of the World is different from any previous contemporary installation. Western installation artists suffice themselves with denouncing one aspect or another of modernity, while their Indonesian colleagues question national politics or use ethnic symbols to raise the eternal problem of their identity.

With Nyoman Erawan it is nothing like this.

He is not tortured by doubt. Instead his work is an affirmation. While opening himself up to the world he announces the endurance of traditional meanings.

His thoughts are Balinese, as are the symbols he uses. His show is also a real ritual, with a real priest and mantra. But he somehow succeeds in transforming the whole into a modern show with a modern message. A transfiguration.

Uniting tradition and modernity, the creative soul of his people and his own unique affirmation of creativity, Nyoman Erawan affirms the cleansing of himself, Bali and the world.

There remain several unresolved questions: does Nyoman Erawan really see -- or refuse to see -- the fractures that are opening in Balinese society such as urbanization, destruction of beaches and changes in mentality.

Is he the last witness of a still cohesive traditional society or the first exorcist of a modern one? Will he someday expose its wounds through his art? Only the future will tell.

A direct assertion must be made, this time to sponsors: Erawan's Cleansing of the World must go international.