Wara's paintings portray people's lives as mysteries

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.