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.