Students exhibit impressive Islamic art

Students exhibit impressive Islamic art

By Mehru Jaffer

JAKARTA (JP): Although contemporary art is global by name,
much of it is highly influenced by the West. For decades, artists
around the world have struggled to depict their trials and
tribulations by using techniques that come more naturally to them
than those from the West.

This spirit is very obvious in most of the 150 exhibits on
display at Taman Mini's Museum Istiqlal. Muslim students from
Yogyakarta are holding an impressive exhibition of fine arts that
reflect the growing preoccupation of people here with the
country's majority religion.

Apart from examining Islamic values, the exhibition is meant
to remind the world that Yogyakarta remains the cultural center
of the country. The proceeds from the exhibition will go to
complete the construction of the Al Muhtar mosque on the campus
of the Fine Arts and Design School of the city's Indonesia
Institute of Arts (ISI).

The students are also staging a piece of theater that has sets
and props as prescribed for Western dramatic performances but in
spirit is Islamic. After much sound and fury created by
percussionists the inner conflict is resolved only with total
submission to God and a final realization of the creator's
ultimate unity and oneness.

A leisurely walk around the exhibits reveals the helplessness
of Muslim artists still looking for something that can be called
purely Islamic. On canvas after canvas, artists are inspired to
integrate ancient Islamic principles not only with modern
techniques of painting but also with ideas from all over the
world, including local cultures that existed long before Islam
arrived.

It is perhaps essential to remember that in the beginning
there was nothing Muslim about man. Complicated political and
social events combined to transform a number of lands with a
variety of earlier histories into Muslim lands.

The problem of the modern Muslim remains what he should do
with all that existed before Islam, which is older than, and
quite independent, of the faith itself?

The peculiarity of Islamic art is that it continues to consist
of a large number of quite disparate traditions, and inherited
arts of extraordinary technical virtuosity and style. It is no
exaggeration to say that the simple, practical and almost
puritanical milieu of early Islam took over an extremely
sophisticated system of visual forms and pre-Islamic traditions.
Anything even resembling aesthetic or visually delightful forms
seem to be almost absent from lands where Islam was born.

The origins of Islamic art can therefore be traced back to the
confluence of two entirely separate things: earlier artistic
traditions and a new faith. To study Islamic art is to unearth
not a static, sudden style, but one which was slowly built up of
a visual language of forms with many dialects and many changes.
It may not be an exaggeration to say that to be able to one day
recognize a common structure remains a real challenge to this day
in the study of Islamic art.

Experts say it was in the 1970s when Islamic elements like
calligraphy were introduced into contemporary painting and
artists opted for abstraction rather than realistic depictions of
the world. This tendency was to heat up during the two decades
that followed and remains uppermost in a great number of minds
still struggling to give a truthful expression of themselves.

Rommi uses oil paints and acrylic and the values that inspire
him most are definitely Islamic. "I will never depict a nude
figure and continue to emphasize the importance of the spiritual
world over the material," Rommi told The Jakarta Post.

It is not just nudity that is negated by the pious here but
also the representation in art of all living things. The
justification for the prohibition being that doing so is like
trying to compete with God, who alone can create something
living. It has had the effect of moving the center of Islamic
artistic concentration to calligraphy, where the word as the
medium of divine revelation plays a tremendous role. Islamic art
is also recognizable today for its continuous reference to
Koranic sources.

But the majority of Muslim painters cannot help but be
inspired by the cultural heritage of their own surroundings as
well and show a deep interest in indigenous, ancient models full
of their own folklore and folk art. This is a truly global
phenomenon. It is happening in Lebanon, Iran, Egypt and there is
no reason why it should not be happening in Java as well.

The exhibition remains open till Sept. 30.