Nyoman's Mother Earth bleeds for Indonesia
Nyoman's Mother Earth bleeds for Indonesia
By Putu Wirata
DENPASAR (JP): "Mother Earth is smeared with blood and violence, what generation will be born from her womb?" asks prominent Indonesian installation artist Nyoman Erawan.
Erawan, 41, raises the question in an exhibition at the Komaneka Fine Art Gallery, from April 3 to May 3, featuring 40 paintings depicting destruction, damage and death. He mixes the dripping painting technique a la Jackson Pollock with the technique he has developed himself.
The exhibition was opened with an art show, and the presentation of an installation work named Ibu Bumi Nusantaraku (My Mother Earth). The show was accompanied by the Budhiswara music group, bringing together movement, music and fine arts. There was symbolization in the triplex wooden black wall, three masked ninja-like dancers, a projector conveying Erawan's paintings.
The climax of the opening night was the thrust of a samurai sword into a gallery door by a fourth dancer who moved like a Japanese ninja. Erawan danced wildly using self-designed equipment resembling the kalpataru, the mythological tree symbolizing the preservation of the environment, an installation he once created. Scores of small dolls hung from the tree's twigs. The barbaric Erawan chewed on the dolls, decimating them into small parts, and threw them to spectators. It was an expression of nauseating greed, the greed of one who did not hesitate to devour the future of newborn babies.
His installation work, measuring 5 meters by 3 meters, emanates a reflection that can suffocate people or make them aware. It represents the Balinese symbolization of the human body as three body parts, what is known as tri-angga. The piece depicts a body with its face up, the head and feet formed from parts of a used boat which he bought from a fisherman in Karangasem. The left and right arms are shaped from two earthenware vessels filled with dolls, water and living fish, and damaged dolls mixed with living worms.
In the belly is a vessel containing water and hoses hanging from a solid body, which represents an image of a head and two sharp weapons thrust into it: a samurai sword and a small dagger smeared with blood.
For the pregnant woman lying on her back facing the sky, "My Mother Earth" is a symbol of the Republic of Indonesia that is now in agony. The work attacks human violence that is vulgar and disquieting. "Clashes take place everywhere, blood is shed everywhere and man needs spiritual reflection to make him aware of his greed," said Erawan.
Perhaps he finds it no longer adequate to make allusions to the violence with Balinese traditional icons that emanate religious nuances. Previously, Erawan often presented violence in a poetic-religious way: Balinese kris, spears much seen in Hindu rituals or big spurs, all of which thrust the body of the boat with cracks and holes. In Yang Ditusuk Menusuk (The One Who Is Stabbed Stabs), a work exhibited at the Natayu Gallery a few years ago, there is the parable of these Balinese religious icons of spears, kris, red mattresses, etc. The work states that people who have been downtrodden for too long will take revenge in the future.
"People who have been stabbed and are bleeding will avenge themselves in future if their patience is finished," he said. Apparently, the riots in which government buildings were damaged, the yields of development plundered and burned by the crowds are among examples of how the people are unable to restrain themselves to "stab after being stabbed for a long time".
Now, "My Mother Earth" weeps helplessly, harboring anxiety in her advanced stage of pregnancy. "What kind of new generation will be born from her womb, a morally flawed generation or a virtuous generation to uphold human morality?" Erawan asked.
Superficially, it is not felt what stance Nyoman Erawan takes against the factual violence committed by the ruling regime, by community groups which borrow the hand of those in power because they can.
"I am against violence. But, as a Hindu, I believe in the law of karma and in this natural process," he said.
Thus, everyone that lives will be shattered, everyone that lives will die, so we do not need to cry lengthily lamenting death and destruction. However, everybody must try to prevent depravity and maintain justice. It is this conviction that has become Erawan's exploration in which he continues to follow the word pralaya, the essence of which is destruction and death.
"As a human being I will continue to explore, although I do not know where I shall arrive. But, I feel we know what our objective is although we never know where we arrive," said Erawan.