RI art gains ground in Japanese exhibits

By Amir Sidharta

JAKARTA (JP): Two important exhibitions which included Indonesian art were held in Japan recently. The Fukuoka Art Museum hosted The Birth of Southeast Asian Art, while Art in Southeast Asia 1997 was exhibited at Tokyo's new Museum of Contemporary Art.

These two followed on the heels of a series of exhibitions of Asian and Southeast Asian art in Japan.

Indonesian works of arts have also been put on display in the West. Last year there were two important exhibitions that featured Indonesian art: the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art at the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane, Australia, and the Traditions/Tensions: Contemporary Art in Asia shown at the Asia Society Galleries in New York.

The exhibitions held this year in Japan were more focused on Southeast Asia. The Birth of Southeast Asian Art: Artists and Movements exhibition, was held from May 9 to June 8. Curated by Masahiro Ushiroshoji, it was a comprehensive introduction to modern Southeast Asian art. This show features about 150 paintings from the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Among the 30 works representative of Indonesia, those by Dutch modernists Jan Frank and Piet Ouburg, and the Japanese landscape painter Mori Kinsen have also been included to provide a comprehensive view about the art developments in the country.

The main portion of the section illustrates the progression of Indonesian art history, beginning with the Beautiful Indies work of Abdullah Suriosubroto. Then the various Indonesian art movements are also introduced, starting with the Persagi art association established in 1937, which included such influential members as S. Soedjojono and Agus Djaya. The painting Cap Go Meh in the show is on loan from the Indonesian Directorate General of Culture, Ministry of Education and Culture. In addition this part also features paintings by Affandi and Hendra Gunawan, who started painting around the same time as the establishment of Persagi.

The works of the members of the Balinese art association Pita Maha, such as those by I Gusti Nyoman Lempad, Anak Agung Gde Sobrat, Ida Bagus Nyoman Buda, and I Ngendon, are also exhibited. The Pita Maha was established in 1936 with the support of Tjokorda Gde Agung Sukawati, the German artist Walter Spies, and the Dutch artist Rudolf Bonnet. A drawing of the Bogor Botanical Gardens by Spies, owned by the Fukuoka Art Museum, provides a significant image for comparative purposes.

Painter Srihadi Sudarsono's sketches and Mochtar Apin and Baharuddin Marasutan's graphic art work, produced between 1945- 1949, illustrate the development of art movements during the war of independence. The Indonesian section of the show concludes with the works of artists like Mochtar Apin, Popo Iskandar, Achmad Sadali, G. Sidharta and Srihadi Sudarsono, who studied at the Bandung Institute of Technology, an institution which embraced Western modernism.

Contemporary

Art in Southeast Asia 1997: Glimpses into the Future, exhibited between April 12 and June 1, offered a view of several contemporary developments in Southeast Asian Art. The exhibition was curated by Shioda Junichi of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Fukunaga Osamu of the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, and Furuichi Yasuko of the Japan Foundation Asia Center.

It featured some 80 works by 17 artists and groups, divided into three themes according to the subject matter and content of their work: From the Crossroads of Culture, The Shifting Region of the "I", and Artists Making a Social Statement.

Five Indonesian artists participated in this show. The works of Agus Suwage were seen as part of a quest for his own identity, as artists like him "try to find their place in a turbulent and confusing social environment" as a result of rapid modernization, and are therefore placed in the second category. Apart from two of his paintings, his installation Keberangkatan (Departure), which consists of severed heads placed in a box representing a vessel with rows of oars on each side, is interpreted as "setting out on journey to seek for their bodies" in an uncertain social situation.

The works of the other Indonesian artists were all seen as making a social statement. Most presented installation pieces. Arahmaiani did a performance piece on the opening day of the show, dressed in a Balinese dancer's costume, equipped with a toy gun and a policeman's red signal torch, using her installation Handle without Care, Do You Care? as a set. Another of her installations was also on show.

Dadang Christianto, made world famous last year when he was featured in the People section of Time, exhibited Mereka Memberi Kesaksian (They Give Evidence). This piece consists of 20 male and female figures, each lifting "the victims of power they have witnessed with their own eyes". On their feet are placed found objects representing the material evidence of violence and injustice of society.

Lesser known Moelyono was born in Tulungagung, East Java. Later he attended Yogyakarta's ASRI (the Indonesian Fine Art Academy), but his final presentation, which was an installation, was rejected. Moelyono returned to his hometown to teach at a local high school and at an elementary school of a neighboring fishing village. Since 1988, he has created installations which essentially attempt to search for solutions to problems in his society. In 1993, he created the installation Visual Art for Marsinah in honor of a woman murdered during a labor dispute. The piece, which was to be exhibited at the Surabaya Art Council, was banned.

In this show, he presents Jeritan Keprihatinan (Screams of Grave Sorrow), a piece which questions the placement of lower class peasants "in the position of an object in the process of development". Moelyono states that "those who undertake developmental projects do not allow them to stand in an equal position as a subject. Thus there is no dialog between the two and the development continues under the nondemocratic situation with no consideration given to the lower class".

'Rekal'

His piece consists of female figures each sitting with a rekal, a stand for reading the Koran, in front of them. This installation shows that collective praying is one of the acts performed by the devout lower class for their own survival within the socially and politically problematic conditions of their society.

Unlike the other Indonesian artists, Semsar Siahaan presents a series of paintings in the show. Among these are Women Workers between Factory and Prison (1994) , which was used as a poster for the World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, and Homage to Christo's Mother, a intense personal piece in memory of the death of his child.

The five Indonesian artists are featured together with four artists from the Philippines, one from Singapore, three Malaysians and four from Thailand. As the exhibit features some of the most interesting works by avant-garde artists from each country, Art in Southeast Asia 1997 is a glimpse into the contemporary developments in art in Southeast Asia.

The Birth of Southeast Asian Art continues at the Hiroshima Prefectural Art Museum between June 17 through July 13, the Shizuoka Prefectural Art Museum of Art between July 19 and Aug. 31, the Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum between Sep. 6 and Oct. 12. Art in Southeast Asia 1997 will be exhibited at the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art between Aug. 2 and Sep. 15.

Other than providing an introduction to Southeast Asian Art, the two exhibitions may also serve as a reminder of the connections between World War II, the bombing of Hiroshima and the independence of Southeast Asian nations following the Japanese occupation.