Shitaresmi paints gloomy pictures of self

By Susi Andrini

YOGYAKARTA (JP): Laksmi Shitaresmi, a 25-year-old painter from Yogyakarta, is showing that batik, too, can be a charming artwork on canvas.

Shitaresmi is exhibiting 16 of her batiks on canvas at the Indonesian-French Institute in Yogyakarta from Sept. 20 to Sept. 29. The colorful decorative works portray Javanese women.

The exhibition, titled Aku (I), tells of the painter's personal experience as a Javanese woman. The images she paints on the canvases speak more of painful than happy experiences. This is a bit ironic because her name would imply otherwise. Laksmi means "goddess of luck" and Shitaresmi means "moon".

"I have always felt marginalized," she says, commenting about the spirit of her work.

With these batiks on canvas, she expresses her happiness, anxiety, anger and feeling of being unfairly treated and subjugated.

A self-portrait, in which she is wearing her hair up, makes it seem as if she is outraged. A piece of floral batik is wrapped around her body to show that she is bound by traditional norms she perceives as oppressive. She holds a glass containing a heart and a piece of intestine, a symbol of patience in the Javanese culture.

Another work shows a tied leg standing on tiptoe. A palm is in the place of the other leg, and above the palm is a wheel and a clock. There is a flower partly covered by leaves. Taking a closer look, we see the objects form a female figure. The hand holds a cracked glass and is about to reach the flower.

The piece tells of the struggle to survive. As Laksmi Shitaresmi says, "Feet and hands signify effort and toil. When I cannot walk because my feet hurt, then I will move with my hands instead, even if the road is thorny."

"I always want peace, which I symbolize with flowers. How can I reach the flower if the glass cracks? But I will keep on trying with the help of the wheel. And the clock will always remind me," says Shitaresmi, who was nominated for the Philip Morris Award in 1997.

Her road to success as a painter was not smooth. She earned her bachelor degree from the Indonesian Arts Institute of Yogyakarta, but she did not paint anything for over two years, saying she was apprehensive and could not concentrate.

Shitaresmi says she feels her family does not support her decision to become an artist. Her parents are lecturers and her family includes a medical doctor, attorney and accountant.

She says the lack of support from her family has undermined her self-confidence. Once she considered forgoing her dream of being an artist to be a bank employee or a civil servant.

Apparently, though, her destiny is leading her to art. Shitaresmi is an independent woman. When she was in junior high school, she wrote stories for Gatutkaca magazine. She was also involved in the theater at her school. When she was in senior high school, she was a contributor to Kedaulatan Rakyat, Yogyakarta's oldest daily newspaper.

Shitaresmi won a writing contest in 1991 in Yogyakarta, and she has won numerous awards, both local and international, for her paintings. She won a gold medal at an Indonesian-Japanese painting exhibition in Tokyo and was named among the 10 best painters in a competition in India. She has also earned various awards from international organizations such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

She received 60 awards in various painting events she participated in between 1987 and 1991.

The numerous awards failed to win her the support of her family, which she badly needs to become a professional artist. While she studied at the art institute, she tried to show her parents that art was a profession worth pursuing. She sold her talent to earn money to support her studies. She worked as a painter in a ceramic factory where she earned Rp 25,000 a month. She also worked as a street vendor selling souvenirs on Malioboro in Yogyakarta.

But Sitharesmi's spirit to become an independent woman remains, although the family pressure does pain her. This forced her to stop creating and she seemed to have lost her identity.

The artist says she just recently found herself and wanted to create paintings again. This is all thanks to the guidance of artist Anggar Prasetyo, who she married earlier this month.

She recently participated in the Indonesian Art Festival in Yogyakarta between June and July.

She says she finds peace in painting. Her favorite media include oil paints, acrylic, pastels, charcoal and strings and coconut fiber to make batik textures.

Shitaresmi is known for her refined brush strokes. She is endowed with such great patience that she is able to create elaborate batik motifs with fine fibers.

One of her masterpieces, Kasmaran (In Love), tells about her joy when Prasetyo proposed to her in May. She depicts herself as a sensual woman, covered with batik with a banana leaf motif, which represents loyalty. An arrow aimed at her heart symbolizes burning love, while a boat and umbrella signify the marriage journey that the couple will embark on.

She plans an exhibition in Jakarta before the new millennium.

Sitharesmi's works about herself encourage viewers to look inside themselves.