RI art gains ground in Japanese exhibits

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.