Teasing and sympathy in paintings of Gus Dur

By M. Dwi Marianto

YOGYAKARTA (JP): Sometimes maybe even President Abdurrahman Wahid wonders if nearly everybody, including the art community, has something against him.

Amid the hullabaloo over Bruneigate and Buloggate at the House of Representatives in late January, there was also the opening of a painting exhibition in Yogyakarta showing him in a less than respectful light.

Titled Semar Samar Semir: Mempertimbangkan Gus Dur (Semar Samar Samir: Evaluating Gus Dur), the exhibition at Gelaran Budaya until Feb. 25 features 15 caricatures of the President, ranging from the humorous and cynical to the sympathetic.

Even the title of the exhibition is a play on words about the conundrum that many consider to be Gus Dur. He is on one level Semar, the wise but physically unattractive man-god of Javanese wayang (puppetry), but he is also samar (vague) and semir, from the word for the act of polishing shoes but which can take on another meaning of uang semir, or money to grease the wheels.

Among the works, Alit Sembodo uses humor in Kabinet Playgroup to express criticism. A group of people in wayang attire are shown on a battlefield, each of them moving helter-skelter. Some of them are in a chariot; others have their bows and arrows drawn. Positioned among them are brightly lit oil lamps, providing the only color in the pencil drawing, which represent provocateurs among the people ready for war.

The lamps are at an angle, with their oil set to fall and start an inferno. The human figures, although represented as cartoons, are shown in tense positions. Among them are people playing trains, with the driver perched precariously on a slanted seat. Some of the "passengers" behind him are shown carried away in fantasy.

In another work, Cool Dirigent by Dipo Andy, the central figure in blue jeans has the face of Gus Dur but the dark, barechested, heavily muscled build of an athlete. The head is too small for the big body, but the figure is bespectacled and his face is painted with red-and-white lines. He is laughing broadly.

Why? The answer may be that he is being tickled by a butterfly sitting on his right shoulder.

Another work, Tanggung Jawab Presiden (The President's Responsibility) by Januri uses a metaphor to express sympathy for the burden borne by the President. Gus Dur is shown as a stout figure, wearing the peci (national cap) and thick glasses. His mouth is pursed shut, his eyes are creased into a squint and his physical exhaustion shows throughout his body. He is bearing two heavy weights on a yoke, which is leaning to the floor. The message seems to be that the man already has enough to deal with, so, please, do not give him further burdens.

The 14 artists are Heri Pemad, Galam, Slamet Suneo S., Dadi Setiadi, Nugrawantoro, Alpha Tejo, Dipo Andy, Yayat Surya, I.G. Ngurah Udiantara, Januri, Agus Purnomo, Tulus Rahadi, Didik Nurhadi and Alit Sembodo. Although they come from different cities and provinces, they work in Yogyakarta.

The curators of Gelaran Budaya gave them the theme of "Gus Dur on canvas" to explore the controversy surrounding the President. In the catalog for the exhibition, Rain, representing the team of curators, said it was not related to political expression or attitudes, but merely expressions of individual artists about Gus Dur through a cultural approach.

The exhibition is further illustration that whenever there is a issue or opposing views circulating within society -- and particularly when the matter is sensational and controversial -- it will exert great influence on the lives of many. It affects the shaping of metaphors and daily language, extending to artistic expression, as people take a view of the major problems.

There will also emerge naturally jokes about the subject of the controversy, taking different forms, from the sophisticated, vulgar, funny to even sexual innuendo. It is symbolic of human creativity that, amid controversy affecting many people, there are those, like the artists in the exhibition, who can look at the funny side of things.

Of course, caricature of political figures is nothing new in art, either on the international scene or in Indonesia.

From Indonesia, artist Tisna Sanjaya created the installation Tiga Puluh Tahun Berfikir Dengan Dengkul (30 Years of Stupid Thinking) for the Asia Pacific Contemporary Arts Triennial in 1999. His extreme parody of B.J. Habibie showed the then president kissing the hand of Soeharto, his mentor. Explicitly and despite great risk, Sanjaya made his political statement.

The representations of Gus Dur are nowhere near as radical as the works of Sanjaya or John Heartfield, who was born in Germany as Helmut Hertzfelde but made a Dadaist poster in 1935 which mocked Adolf Hitler as a "superman", his throat crammed with gold coins.

They are also not as sensational or explicit as the material proliferating in print and electronic media, as well as the Internet. The approach to the burning issues surrounding Gus Dur is generally too vague, perhaps befitting the use of samar in the exhibition's title.

The goal of "evaluating" Gus Dur has yet to be fully manifested; perhaps a better choice of words would have been "sketching". The problem is that only superficial problems of the President are explored, while the substantial issues which have hobbled him recently and which have been stripped bare in the media are not touched upon at all. It leads to its own question, of who is not afraid to get to the heart of the matter.

The author is an art analyst employed at Lembaga Penelitian Institut Seni Indonesia in Yogyakarta.