This curatorial essay was written by Rifky Effendy for the solo exhibition of an Indonesia female artist, Titarubi. The translation of this essay which I did in 2003, is one of my first works on arts subjects.
Over a year ago Tita exhibited a series of her installation works in Benda Gallery, Yogyakarta, entitled Se(tubuh), which was thick with feminine issues. Through shapes of bodies mainly made with stoneware mixed with several other materials, the artworks were presented dramatically and theatrically. So were the artworks she exhibited in Nadi gallery themed “All I Need is Love”, and the “Girl’s Talk” exhibition on Edwin Gallery in 2003, which used more of the everyday objects but was still magical. Behind these works is a narration of her personal struggles in life. She took her daily experiences, offered and brought us a dialog about female social issues within a society and a culture.
Tita’s latest installation series lean towards the interpersonal issues between herself and the normative family relations, as she experienced her “fate” as a woman, a wife, and a mother in a social life of a certain society. The series is much more personal because she had used the images of her two daughters, Gendis and Carkul, which she applied on sculptures and clay printed relief, material manipulations with gravures on glass, aluminium printed relief, shadows (light) and on graphic etching printings.
Society’s Stigma
The little bodies are filled with Arabic characters, like a tattoo. With no intention to compare one another, but it reminded me to the photographic images made by an Iran female artist who resides in New York City, Shirin Neshat, who often use Arabic characters on the face or the bodies she photographed. Tita might be inspired by Neshat, who is popular and had become an icon alike for contemporary Asian-American female artist. One thing is similar between the two artworks, a stigma of religion.
Arabic characters are identical to the religious background of these women; the Islamic world. Both Iran and Indonesia are two countries with Moslems majority in their citizens, although the religious and cultural issues are different between these two countries, and each has different and unique solutions to it.
The use of Islamic icons (stigma) in Tita’s work is influenced by her upbringing in a family living within the Indonesian society, with its clashing values and norms; between tradition, religion, and modernity. The interaction and tension between these values could very much be noted in the daily life.
As an artist, her life within her social environment of the middle-class society certainly brought up many internal conflicts. The children figures she uses as the main element in her artwork is a symbol, shaped by her relation as a mother with her two daughters, also by the social and cultural environment surrounding them. Both juxtapose as a critical point in her work because it highlights the contrasts and implying a tension, an idiosyncratic. The mother-daughter relation is one of the most essential relations as it contains spiritual values. Mother and daughter posses some kind of a spiritual interconnectivity, added to the genetic reasons, making it an important aspect within a family, which also creates complex problems.
Gendis the child, gesturing an opened hand with the palm upward, could be takes as a symbol of a prayer, surrender, rejection, or in a process of doing some action. The symbol juxtaposes a conflict: accepting something (a value) from outside, or the external factor. As we all realise, social constructs may strengthen, enrich, or reduce human consciences. Through here we can see a general daily problems; the metaphors of the body as “a battle ground of values”, which maybe the inevitable risk of life itself. This fact had become a personal question for everyone; of which unique and personal answers must be seek by each.
Self and the Family
It is dilemmatic when so many conflicting values and consciences pass into our personal life, whether we realise it or not; by culture shock, educational patterns, or through the consequences of living in a society like in Indonesia. Especially when this is experienced by a family.
Anthony Giddens observed the globalization era had shifted the value of traditional families, especially in a society as ours. The parent-children relations used to be based on the norms such as economy, traditional beliefs, and religion. This kind of relationship passes on dogmatic tendencies, producing an absolute authority of the parents. Now this pattern had shifted into a relationship based on openness, dialogues, equality, and democracy. Giddens saw it as an “emotion democracy” in the daily life. Democratic parents are parents with the authority based on an “implicit contract”. In a emotion democracy, children can and should be able to question their parents. Parents are no longer an absolute body of the society. (Giddens, 1999: 54 – 63). The parents-children relation become rational, parents are demanded to give suitable answers for everything. This is necessary to avoid what is feared by many, when the older generation failed to provide their young with logics, including the religious aspects. [1]
Religious stigma could be seen on the Arabic characters gravures on the surface of her ceramic sculptures and relief. The characters are taken from passages of Koran; short prayers to start the daily activities such as eating, sleeping, et cetera. A prayer marking a certain action to make it blessed by the power that be, so it will be useful for oneself and the others. This had been taught since a very tender age by parents or religious teachers. These prayers are a symbol to our effort in protecting ourselves from the negative effects. A spiritual “shield” as we encountered external aggression. These prayers are carved on innocent bodies like iron armour worn by knights in the holy war many centuries ago.
In Islam, it is believed that life is a struggle for human. An “immortal war” against the negative influences, a force that seems an abstract, and often believed to lie ahead of us and would attack when least expected. A prayer is a way to guard our body and soul against such force.
We also observed the shape of papaya leafs as an element, even a symbolic form. The function of Papaya leafs in the traditional culture as a natural element used to cure certain illness, or it’s often used as a wrap to tenderize and lessen the aroma of raw meat, such as cow’s or goat’s.
A woman, according to Simone de Beauvoir in Second Sex, always feel like being surrounded by waves, radiations, mystical liquid; she believes in telepathy, astrology, radiotherapy, mesmerism, theosophy, and things magic, shamanism; her religion filled with primitive magical things: candles, worshiping, contraprayers. Her behaviour will be odd and she will be dependent to prayers; to gain certain goals she will perform certain general rituals. In certain traditional cultures in Indonesia we will find various shapes and sorts of “amulet” or “talisman”, like a tattoo or a thing wrapped in a piece of cloth and slipped under one’s garments. It is used to avoid foreign evil forces from the outside. Tita had metaphorically tried to block the external values constructed by life itself through symbolization of prayers shield to the papaya leaf, in order to protect the people she loves.
Naive questions of the closest people about the contradiction of religion and life’s reality had turned into an internal conflict, and then a contradicting fact when it comes to finding the real truth in an ocean of dominating values, constricted in social construction and certain privilege which breeds universality, even shaping stereotypes over unique individual lives. Religious structure had turned into a vehicle of certain interests and had eliminated individual values. This is where the tension is most obvious. Tita’s worries in imagining and saving her children’s future in the space of fears, worries, and struggles. Tita’s submission took shape in patience; she arranges everything and not putting the blame to anyone, because she holds no power over anybody or anything but herself.
This representation is well elaborated through Tita’s awareness on the basic characteristic of the materials. The structurally fragile stoneware ceramics, burn cracks on the clear and gleaming surface of glass, the shining and smooth surface of the aluminium sheet, and the pressure of steel needles on metal surface which is recorded through etching graphic machine, on the combination technique on mediums such as wood, nails, lighting elements, or spatial arrangement. Through repetitions which leaning toward the visual aspect and the simple colour harmonization, whether it is vertically positioned against the wall, or horizontally on the floor, a terrorizing and lyrical rhythm thus created. Here we can see the similarity with the spirit of Neshat’s works: combining between the understanding of a problem, and the artistic idea and maturity.
Expressions and Mediums
Medium in Tita’s hands became as important to be discussed. Besides using a variety of mediums, she also succeeded in turning each medium into a specific representation with distinct characters.
Medium usages have a long social construction recorded in the history, especially in contemporary Western modern art taught in art schools. Pottery art, in which Tita is fluent in, in the common fine art point of view, is not a media known of being used by famous great artists of time. The history of modern art had shown that the media of oil paint on canvasses in the traditional art of painting, metal casts or wood and rock carving in the traditional art of sculpting is an expression media that is commonly being used by male artists.
Modernism mythology, according to an American woman critic, Mary Anne Staniszwelski, favours too much on the art of painting because of the psychological trace of life the artists made. Painting is considered much more valuable because it spontaneously recorded self expression, without any boundaries, and is pure.[2] Although later in the 60’s, the traditional art of painting is politically shifted by artist such as Andy Warhol and Gerhard Richter, who criticized the painting tradition by entering the ambiguity of popular art and using photography in their paintings.
The choice of a medium could be considered as an ideology, it is no longer able to be taken as neutral. Medium is a tool of expression or as a technology might imply a certain relation towards some things or ideas, caused by a historical construction, or because it is being used by certain social groups to build power, fill their needs, supplanted their own values. Yasraf Amir Piliang explained how technology (or a medium) had created a “monopoly of knowledge” by dominant groups within the society and marginalized those who have no access into it, in this case groups of women and children. (Piliang, 2001:9).
And then, Tita uses ceramic as the main medium, which is always related to the craft arts, where this medium tended to be marginalized in the world of art. An Indonesian feminist poetess, Toety Heraty, in an interview argued that every form of art has its own uniqueness and specifications in the material used as the medium. Therefore it is useless to put art into different classifications, one higher then the rest.
There are still masculine views on how craft arts are not an art because it relies very much on the crafting ability, while art lies heavily on “inspiration”. The development of post-modern issues should be able to put craftsmanship as an aspect of art, and if this is the case there will be more women in the history of art because of their works in craft productions, especially pottery and textile (Heraty, 2003: 146 – 147). Sanento Yuliman even had indicated this through an important proposal in his concept of “low art and high art”.[3]
The lack of critical awareness on mediums in the development of (modern) art in Indonesia had never been a consideration in general for the artists when working on their art. This contradicts the Modern Art Movement (Gerakan Seni Rupa Baru) who had been implying it in their manifestos and artworks, which tended to be extraordinary and trespass the art convention at that time.
Artist Dolorosa Sinaga explained how “mediums of art” hadn’t been considered as a tool of expression with certain means, except as the medium of personal expression. So it is difficult to find art issues based on female identity expressions. The dominant issue in Indonesia is humanity, it tend to discuss social-political issues, and is still confined on the visual ideas instead of the goals of mind-shaping through visual languages (Sinaga, 2003: 124).
Explicitly, Tita never nudged the issue of medium, or gender as a movement. But since the beginning, her artworks always put expressions and mediums as a consideration. It’s always been there, inherent within her. Balance is portrayed through the combination of themes, work materials and production methods.
Space Between
There’s a tendency of intersubjectivity when Tita starts or reacting on some issues, where everything outside her seems to always have to touch or surround her. It may be the interaction of the personal life around her; her husband’s, her children’s, closest friends’, even her own social activities, which is quite a lot. Intersubjectivity is something formed and coming between people and cultures (Staniszwelski, 1995:158). Her works of art are not derived from Cartesian self-centred inner meditation, which always created a monologue in loneliness. She dialogues through her conscience and contemplates in interpersonally between her private and public space. Her search of idioms is not too verbal but tends to be symbolic, like the foetus, human figures, faces, and the rest, expresses the closeness and intimacy with her own body. It can also represent the most general perception. So is the choice of mediums, such as ceramic, metal, glass, water, plastic, cupboard, even the body in performance. She always searches on what is suitable most to communicate and always tries to create a space between ratio and emotions. She is really standing between intersection of love and hate, independency and dependency, sacred and profanity, personal and public, poetic and politics, feminine and masculine. But above all that, because she is a woman. Like de Beauvoir once said, “No matter how much she wants to shut the door and the windows, she would never feel safe at home.
Had she found God there?
Jakarta 4 Januari 2004.
[1] Refer to Giddens in “Living in a Post Traditional Society”, the Indonesian translation by Ali Noer Zaman (IRCiSoD, Yogyakarta. 2003) especially pages 92-93.
[2] In International Art in the 1980s, several female artists like Cindy Sherman, and Sherrie Levine uses photography as a medium with different manipulation. Levine re-created the artworks of modern photography maestros such as Edward Weston or Walker Evans. She questioned on how the myth of creativity and the absolute values of artist originality in respond to the privilege in producing Western Modern Art issues. While Sherman made photos of herself in stereotypic of women characters and positions, as it was often presented in popular cultural imagery, such as in movies and commercials. Photography is a mediated medium. There are mechanical and chemical process to produce images from a negative, thus no originality. Refer to Staniszwelski, 1995 : 154 – 157.
[3] Also refer to “Dua Seni Rupa” Essay in Sepilihan Tulisan Sanento Yuliman page 23.
Bibliography:
- Interviews with Tita Rubiati, Yogyakarta, Jakarta, 2003.
- Staniszwelski, Marry Anne. Believing is Seeing, Creating the Culture of Art. Penguin Books, USA, 1995.
- de Beauvoir, Simone. Second Sex. Interpreted in Bahasa Indonesia Kehidupan Perempuan. By Toni B. Febriantono and Nuraini Juliastuti. Pustaka Promethea, Yogyakarta 2003.
- Politik dan Gender. Aspek-aspek Seni Visual Indonesia. Yayasan Cemeti, Yogyakarta, 2003.
- Yuliman, Sanento. Dua Seni Rupa: Sepilihan Tulisan. Edited by Asikin Hassan. Yayasan Kalam, Jakarta, 2001.
- Jurnal Perempuan edisi 18, Yayasan Jurnal Perempuan, Jakarta, 2001.
- Giddens, Anthony. Runaway World: How Globalization is Re-shaping Our Lives. Profile Books, London, 1999.
- Giddens, Anthony in Masyarakat Post-Tradisional. Translated from Living in A Post-Traditional Society by Ali Noer Zaman. Published by IRCiSoD, Yogyakarta, 2003.
