Wara's paintings portray people's lives as mysteries

By Chandra Johan

JAKARTA (JP): In the midst of the empty dark plain and silent and tenacious atmosphere -- a dark-red sky like blood and a rolling clod of cloud -- are three human figures. They look strange and mysterious, with eyes as big as table-tennis balls. The strangeness is accentuated by a flower behind one of the three figures, a bald headed figure in a sitting pose, who appears to part-buried in the mourning earth. Another figure with long hair though bald pate, stands erect, gazing into the barren space around him. The last slightly more human figure is a sad- looking woman, also standing in the midst of this estrangement.

The three appear as castaways on the shores of some strange place, without trees or houses and buildings, only a solitary flower. Perhaps the master of the sky is angry, so that the sky has become red and the clouds black, the lives of the individuals totally meaningless.

That is Badai Keheningan (The Storm of Silence), one of the paintings by Wara Anindyah, 30, presented in her solo exhibition at Galeri Lontar, East Jakarta, until Aug. 12. Almost all of Wara's paintings of l999, of relatively large size (averaging l40 cm x 200 cm), are about silence, loneliness, pressure, death, misery and strangeness. People and their lives are portrayed as a mystery. The problems of life in Wara's paintings stand side by side with the problems of death. The strangeness of human life always stands side by side with the tragedy of their own lives.

Wara's work asks us to meditate upon human fate, a fate filled with unpleasant feelings, by portraying strange and scary human faces. She reminds us continually about the force of death, although what she is painting is the problem of life. Sometimes she summons allegories and fine, sublime symbols, sometimes she lets her subjective imagination wander wildly. Such complexities allow for different interpretations which require patience to unravel.

In some 50 of her pastels and oil paintings from between l995 and l999 we observed a continuity and consistency in expression of themes and style. Generally, her works depicted a female object under pressure, although they were not always intertwined with the current hot topic of social and gender discourse.

Badai Keheningan is an allegory and symbol of human fate, a tragedy amid the microcosms that cannot free themselves from the macrocosms. In old allegorical and symbolical stories we are always reminded that the events in the macrocosms are involved in arranging events on earth. Such are the stories of Ramayana and the Mahabharata, or in Illias and Odiseus. In Badai Keheningan (The Storm of Stillness) the sky is depicted as red as blood, the surroundings loom larger, deserted and emphatic, and powerless individuals are cast ashore. What does the red sky mean for the microcosms? Why are there no plants in the surroundings? Are not plants a sign of life? Badai Keheningan is an interpretation of worry, a worry which is not merely driven by neurotic and realistic anxieties. The concern is more an ontological anxiety. Ontological anxiety always ends with a number of questions: "What is our life's aim; Who am I? What shall I do with my life? Is death the end of everything?"

Such questions are reflected in almost all of Wara's works and are an important part of human life. In one of his poems, the English poet William Wordsworth rendered a clear illustration of this type of anxiety: The anxiety I feel is very much/ I am afraid of listening to soft rustling of grassland/ and the black shadow of the passing cloud/ has the strength to make me tremble.

As an artist who prefers expressing her feelings on paper and canvas, Wara is also a closed figure who stores up human concerns and worries, for example Pencuri Waktu (Time Thief), Misteri Kasih Sayang (The Mystery of Love), Namaku Sunyi (My Name is Loneliness).

In Pencuri Waktu Wara interprets a subjective experience about the nature of death. The painting with a yellow and black base presents a seated female figure accompanied by a gigantic cruel cat. The female with long fingers and nails has a scary face among the dark aisles, and commands a compelling presence with her height. The presence of a little cat among the dark and high aisles is more striking then the upright coffin containing a corpse behind the giant cat and the mysterious female. So we are asking too, what is the artist's purpose behind this painting? Although there is an image of a clock on the building above the aisles, the painting remains a puzzle.

This painting, which draws the attention of many visitors, is not easily understood, because Wara uses allegories and symbols that are very subjective and only understood by the painter herself. Many painters, mainly women painters, employ a personal artistic vocabulary. Frida Kahlo from Mexico, for example, developed a personal pictorial technique employing its own vocabulary and syntax. This kind of painter usually uses encoded symbols, offer insights into their works and the circumstances surrounding its creation.

In Pencuri Waktu, Wara symbolizes a mysterious and strange woman as The Angel of Death, while the giant cat with the red eyes is her servant creature who must pull somebody's soul from its life. So, here, Pencuri Waktu, at least according to Wara's interpretation, is the thief of somebody's life time. While the presence of such oblique symbols creates difficulty in understandings, it at the same time makes this painting stronger.

Some of Wara's paintings present social and family problems, like Suami Istri (Husband Wife), Istri Para Penyair (Poets' Wives) and Keluarga Ganjil (Weird Family).

Although a Muslim, several of Wara's paintings depict Jesus Christ within a gripping sacramental atmosphere.

This taciturn painter was born in Magelang, Central Java, and attended the Indonesian Institute of the Arts in Yogyakarta. Wara however, did not finish her studies, preferring to develop herself through self-study. Married to an artist from Yogyakarta, Sri Harjanto Sahid, together they have turned their house into a university, complete with a book collection numbering in the thousands.