Turkish artist inspired by Indonesian culture
Turkish artist inspired by Indonesian culture
By Margaret Agusta
JAKARTA (JP): Mubeccel Siber of Turkey finds insight to be her best source of inspiration when painting Indonesian subjects.
"Art is not only a reflection of the artist's inspiration, but it is the artist's desire to communicate his or her own experience and insight through works of art," Siber, originally from Istanbul, said in a recent interview.
"As I tried to capture the inner meanings and complexity of the Indonesian culture in my several paintings, I became more and more aware ... discovering the mystic quality, though sometimes not knowing fully the story of the rituals, or the movements in the dances. But somehow I was able to get into the mood and atmosphere," she said.
Unlike many artists who visit the archipelago briefly and become intoxicated with its exotic beauty or mystic atmosphere, Siber has lived in Indonesia on and off since she and her economist husband first arrived in Jakarta in 1967.
Her familiarity with the country has been gleaned through travels to the various parts of Java and Bali, in particular, and through the many friendships she has cultivated with Indonesians over the years.
Insight
This experience and the insight it brings saves her works from taking on the sweet, touristic appearance that can creep into works by artists inspired by something new, but lacking the time or the motivation to delve further.
In May 1994, she explained her interest in Indonesian culture and art during a televised interview for SCTV.
"When I came here in 1967, straight from Turkey, the diversity of the cultures in Indonesia and the tolerance between them to each other attracted my attention and I started to love it.
"And it was as If I have lived here all my life. Everything came very easy for me to understand. If I see certain rituals or dances ... I get the mood very easily, without making effort."
A case in point is her recent series of large watercolor paintings of Indonesian dancers. It was initially inspired by a local contemporary dance performance.
"I was lucky enough to watch the Panji Sepuh performance twice in Jakarta. I was so deeply overpowered by it that I wanted to capture and share my experience through paintings," she told The Jakarta Post.
Panji Sepuh, featuring Maria D. Hoetomo and Sulistyo Tirtokusumo, as well as other dancers, was based on a poem by Goenawan Mohamad, editor of the now banned Tempo magazine. It tells the story of a prince who aspires to holiness, but fails due to human weakness.
The dance-drama, which ends with the burning of the yellow umbrella, a symbol of power in many of Indonesia's ethnic communities, constitutes a biting revelation of how ephemeral power actually is. It also elicits the image of purifying oneself after a degrading experience.
Panji Sepuh inspired Siber's watercolor entitled Ngruwat-Fire Purification (54 x 115 cm). "When choreographer and dancer Sulistyo Tirtokusumo was kind enough to perform and explain his performance, I was able to paint a series of water colors. The motivation was so great."
Siber acknowledged that, " ... the dancing with the umbrella symbolizing power and followed by burning it was a dramatic and moving experience. One can interpret it as going to heaven and purifying the soul."
Dancers
Sulistyo's spontaneous dance presentations in her home were just the beginning. He introduced her to other dancers, including Marie Hoetomo, who also performed and posed for her.
These sessions with the dancers resulted in a series of amazingly large wet-on-wet technique watercolors, most of them 68 x 110 centimeters in size.
"Marie Hoetomo's dancing unfolded another aspect of Javanese dancing; graceful yet controlled movements," said Siber, who had extensive previous experience with painting Balinese dancers, who are noted for their rapid and dynamic movements.
"It was a challenge for me to paint full length portraits of these performances in watercolor," she explained.
"Like Javanese dancing, I had to control and discipline myself, but be spontaneous enough not to give a controlled impression, so that the result was not over controlled," she said.
Capturing the expression of the eyes of the performers who presented Betawi (indigenous Jakartan) dances for her inspiration was another challenge.
"The Betawi dances appealed because of the colorful costumes with their colorful hats and the use of the eyes for expressions," she said. "I emphasized the eyes because of the quality of the Betawi dance itself."
Delving
Siber's delving into the social and cultural environment of Indonesia has not been limited to dance. Over the years she has painted a wide range of subjects in both watercolor and oil paints.
Her paintings done in the 1980s contain depictions of housemaids carrying their young charges in colorful kain panjang and laborers eating at roadside food stalls found near her home. She also painted the monuments and temples of Java and the rituals of Bali during this period.
"I was, from the very beginning of my second arrival in Indonesia in 1984, attracted to the spirituality of Balinese ritual dances and Borobudur with its stupas and buddhas," she said last week.
She has found the opportunity to explore the spiritual side of existence in those subjects. In a 1986 interview with the Post she said, "This also gives me the opportunity to explore the spiritual side, makes my life more whole; not the religion, only going into myself."
She explained further that her oil works of Javanese temples and Balinese priests, musicians and dancers functioned as a bridge into a deeper insight of the culture and a greater awareness of herself.
"Although I am painting the external world, it is a means toward introspection and a way to express myself," she said.
The ancient spiritual qualities of the statues of Buddha at the Borobudur temple in Central Java drew interested her intensely and motivated her to depict them in several airy, misty oil paintings.
"They are timeless, they have sat there for centuries. I eliminated as much as possible the background details to stress this."
The elimination of background detail, as well as segments of the main figures and forms, and the domination of white in her works, characterizes both her watercolors and oil paintings.
Noted Indonesian writer, Gerson Poyk, commented on these aspects of her work in an article published in Famili magazine in October 1986. "To this artist, painting is an attempt to grasp the inherent spiritual value or meaning of the subject being painted," he wrote.
"In order to express the depth of feeling and to create the mood elicited from her heart, Mubeccel Siber uses color fields of white or gray to provide emphasis to her detailed treatment of faces, eyes and hands," Gerson wrote.
Of her use of the white ground in her watercolor paintings and the use of layers of white paint in her oil works, Siber once told Indonesian art critic Agus Dermawan: "I am becoming more aware that there is no other color but white which can symbolize the feeling of peacefulness in human beings."
In his June 1988 article published in Tempo magazine, Agus Dermawan commented that Siber had the insight and the technical ability to transcend the simple depiction of Indonesian subjects in a touristic manner. He said her works carried her viewers a step further due to her "vision and high level of imagination."
Technique
Siber's technical strength has come over years of intense work and study. She has devoted a large part of her life to painting in both watercolor and oils, as well as studying painting and drawing at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington D.C. in the United States and interior design in Manila, the Philippines.
She has experimented with a number of techniques, particularly in watercolor.
"Watercolor is a difficult medium, and requires long years of practice and skill. In order to master it I had to work almost 20 years," Siber explained. "I employ the wet-on-wet technique with a minimum of color and lines."
She used this technique for her large works of the Javanese and Betawi dancers and for her much smaller works of flowers, still lifes and, occasionally, landscapes.
The wet-on-wet technique is perhaps the most difficult to control of all approaches to the use of watercolor.
She explained the challenge of this technique in her SCTV television interview last year. "Wet-on-wet means you wet the paper and then you work with the wet brush. By this way, it takes longer years to master because everything is running, you know, all the water. But I am happy with the result, it suits my character, my nature."
Siber's use of brushwork to block segments of color onto the slick surface of the wet paper enables her to avoid the use of stiff, solid line. This gives a spiritual, fluid quality to her works, which is enhanced by her penchant for leaving large segments of the white ground of the paper showing through her subtle, often pastel hues.
"A watercolorist's life is devoted to mastering this intricate medium in search to find a style of his or her own to express his or her vision on paper," she told the Post.
"It can be highly gratifying for the artist if all of the elements turned out to be successful in his or her art."
Exhibitions
Siber has lived in several countries in the East, including the Philippines and Indonesia, and has shown her work in joint exhibitions.
In 1984, she showed several works with the Saturday Group Painters at the State Fine Arts Gallery in Manila, the Philippines. In 1985, she showed for the first time in Indonesia with the well known cross-cultural artists' organization, Group Sembilan. She also exhibited with Group Sembilan in Jakarta in 1986, 1988 and 1994.
Siber took part in the 1989 International Union of Women Artists Federation exhibition at Kobe City Museum in Japan.
In the United States, her works were included in the Meridian House "Echoes of Anatolia" exhibition in Washington D.C., Chicago and New York.
Besides her extensive joint exhibitions, this prolific painter held 15 solo exhibitions between 1980 and 1991 in countries as diverse as Turkey, Bangladesh, the United States, the Philippines and Indonesia.