Between Traditional & I am the fifth of nine children and was born on August 19, 1967 in an agricultural community in Tegal, Central Java. Economic difficulties and agricultural decline forced my parents to move to Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta, in the early 1980’s where they established a Warteg, or small food stall. These little restaurants which serve the poor working class are well known and abundant in Jakarta, a city renown for its poverty and overcrowded population. My family maintained our village home and we were often separated from our parents while they were working. As I got older, I often went to Jakarta to help my parents. I moved to Yogyakarta 1987 for study art in Indonesian Art Institute of Yogyakarta, Indonesia and graduated in 1994. |
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Aesthetic Awareness I enjoyed all different kinds of traditional art forms that were common when I was young, especially the wooden puppet performances that are typical of West Java. These art forms were part of my motivation to become an artists and still inform my work today. When I was a child I didn’t have toys or art materials so I began to make things using natural materials like clay, coconuts and pieces of bamboo. After making many toy puppets I began to pretend I was a dalang (puppet master) and would perform my own stories while playing with other children. |
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Constructing the Theme: Conflict, Dreams and Tragedy
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Ceremony of The Souls (1996-1999) My work from this period often explored the tension between the traditional and modern world. It was during this time that I moved to the United States and I felt that I was straddling the border between these two worlds. I felt seduced and repelled by what each had to offer and this uncomfortable awareness was the impetus for much of my work. The work in these themes was not controlled by aesthetic imperatives. Rather it was the original idea that directed me and “controlled” the composition and aesthetics of each piece. This work really functioned as a dialogue between my mind and my stomach. |
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Tradition as Rebellion in the Modern World My visual language during the period 1996-99 was partly inspired by traditional Indonesian culture as well as global pop images. I was not concerned with perpetuating or reinterpreting traditional images from Indonesian folk traditions or recycling pop icons. Instead I was manipulating, combining and layering images so that I could use them as symbols to discuss political and social concerns. “I’m not in the habit of rejecting old traditions in favor of new ones. I do not shatter old traditions, nor do I substitute the avante garde practices of new culture for the old. I accept and acknowledge that I live in a world that sees and values both.” |
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NusaAmuk THE NEW GOD SERIES Over the last 9 years four themes dominated my artwork. Each period was inspired by personal and public events in my life: |
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THE NEW GOD SERIES Works in this series explore the idols our global society venerates: wealth, power, violence, consumerism, beauty and fame. The work examines and questions a culture that is focused on physical rather than spiritual needs. We are drunk by physical pleasure and are increasingly dependent on mass marketed notions of success and happiness, which are stealing our psychological and emotional space. We are unable to escape from the images that have become our new gods. |
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Melting Souls 1999-2001 These works examine the corrosion of the human spirit. The work questions why people adopt ideas and beliefs that are foreign to their own experiences by examining the impact of social and political phenomena on individuals. The narrative in these works challenge perceptions of spirituality, confrontation, violence and personal responsibility. |
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Community Storage 2000-2001 In these works the idea of storage refers to a place for individuals to assemble and collectively create values (norms). It is a place that responds to both the thinking and physical world. We are all contributors to these norms and recognize and enforce their existence. From this collective storage tension sometimes develops because of interaction between individuals, groups and ethnicities. The result is injustice, oppression, corruption, violence, autocracy, intolerance and spiritual, ethical, and moral corrosion. These tensions or structures manifest themselves in a physical or ideological manner. What occurs is confusion and disorder between the occupants and the place which is occupied (landscape). |
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SUBLIME TUNNEL Climax of Amok, people start questioning them selves about their conditions – about chaos, rethinking, rebuilding & healing process. |
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Hurting Landscape 2002 – 2004 Hurting Landscape has a close connection to an earlier series called Community storage. The work in Hurting Landscape continues my exploration of how individuals collectively create values and norms through relationships with their physical and mental environment. My earlier focus was on the tension created from the interaction between individuals and groups as they create standards for social life and the profound confusion and social disorder that can result. The basic premise that guides the work in Hurting Landscape is that the physical landscape always has a connection to, or reflects, the interior landscape of a community. The paintings, sculpture and installations presented in Hurting Landscape reflect the physical changes, deviations, damage and corrosion of the landscape around me. I explore the mindset, systems and structures necessary to create these kinds of significant physical modifications and question who they benefit. It seems that the intended or ideal functions of social–political structures have been corrupted, from the highest to the lowest levels. This interaction – this cause and effect – is at the core of my work. Questioning the impetus and goals of these structures and mentality make visible a new dimension for seeing landscape from personal perspective. |
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Inter-Eruption 2004 - 2005 All aspects of our lives; personal relationships, social interaction, nation building and interaction between countries has multi-layered consequences for our existence and social position. A process of “mixing” (cultural, social, physical) has resulted in transformation through interaction. Older cultures are changed or evicted by new cultures. The formation of groups and the rapid diffusion of ideas are the heart beat of society today and have significant consequences on our social “space”. A primordial desire to express superiority, however, often emerges when different groups (whether from specific areas, races or ideologies) interact. This desire to state superiority is an attempt to protect common assumptions, traditions and beliefs and to demonstrate solidarity (togetherness). However, this attempt to demonstrate solidarity often merely results in the creation of a set of stereotypes. People often have problems interacting or finding common ground as a result of their overlapping cultures and sub-cultures. When we feel that our basic rights have been manipulated, contaminated or forcibly removed tension builds up and creates an environment where appalling trauma and impact can be done to a culture. In such an environment, people begin to believe they can “read” a person’s physical image as a kind of text which articulates norms and ethics – this “reading” can end up standardizing (as good or evil) certain characteristics for individuals, groups (society) or even governments. This “reading” is sometimes manipulated for specific purposes based on reasons both legitimate and questionable. Each one of us can be viewed as a visual “text” of norms and ethics which effects our social space. |
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PUPPET BLUES 2004 -2006 The work in Puppet Blues is a continuation of ideas presented in a body of work exhibited under the title “Inter-Eruption” in 2005 which explored public perception and the phenomena of labeling and categorizing that is practiced so eagerly in the modern world. The paintings, puppets and videos that make up Puppet Blues show how I play with language as a method of presenting ideas that encourage investigation and scrutiny and provoke viewers to examine their assumptions and beliefs. For example, I examine the conviction that it is possible to label the lives and situations of others simply by viewing their public lives or exteriors. I try to engage the public by playing with language and symbols that challenge the reliability of labels. Manipulating language, in my case “visual language”, to represent multiple meanings is an important function of the Indonesian Shadow Play and a vital skill of the dalang (puppet master). Artists often take on a role similar to that of a dalang: artists are a part of society, but are still often on the outside of society. In the same way that a dalang, while orchestrating and controlling the story, can “become” a character in the play, so too do artists maintain dual roles as members of society and outside observers of society. During the Suharto era dalang were often either used as tools of communication to promote Suharto’s policies or viewed as subversives and enemies of the regime. The work I am creating for this exhibition is close in spirit with the role of dalang as subversives in society. This work presents a visual language that is sad, ironic, satirical and critical (as well as self-critical) in order to provoke our minds to reflect further - to go beyond assumptions and embrace complexity. *** |