The exhibition itself, which runs until Oct. 13 at the Bentara Budaya Jakarta cultural center in Central Jakarta, is a display of satirical paintings, sketches and comic strips that satirize society, political figures and human behavior in Indonesia — some depicted optimistically, but most not so much.

As the exhibition’s foreword by late Kompas cartoonist GM Sudarta noted, “the criticisms often told in caricatures is not always sharp”.

The cartoonist, who has built a legacy at the newspaper through his Om Pasikom comic strip, insists that a caricaturist can recognize whether his or her work is good when the subject of their criticism can also smile at it.

“And therefore, the vision of satirical cartoons is more importantly addressed through the way they tell the story, or in other words, screaming their criticism through the whispers of their art,” Bentara Budaya program director Frans Sartono said in the foreword.

But it is clear that the works displayed in the exhibition were mainly created through the lens of the older generation. This becomes obvious through the way these messages are delivered and the topics that get skewered. It is fair though as most of the participating cartoonists, such as Mice Misrad, Ika W. Burhan, Thomdean, Beng Rahadian and Didie SW are cartoonists of significant experience and age.

What makes the generational mindset apparent in these works is the fact that the topics they try to address are more or less the same: society’s obsession with mobile phones and social media, the silly attitudes of millennials when it comes to love and the ribbing of smiling politicians, usually depicted as rats with round bags of money laughing at the injustices that they created.

There is nothing wrong with these topics per se, as the political and social satire addresses the underlying problems that Indonesia has long faced and are holding back its true growth as a society. If cartoonists from yore have been talking about the same issues back then as they do today, then not a lot has changed in Indonesia, right? Or does it show the fact that these older generation cartoonists have nowhere else to go?

Or maybe as Indonesian society inches closer into the future, happenings become more absurd — at least, that’s how it is to these artists in the exhibition.

Especially with the advent of social media seemingly giving power to caricaturize everything to almost anyone, anywhere, some of the cartoonists find it hard to keep up with the rapid pace.

“It’s getting harder to satirize the world because everyone is being satirical on social media. The reality is that because everything today is funny, then nothing is funny. Speaking for my hyperbolic style of comedy, it’s easier to laugh at the world but harder to satirize it,” Mice said.

Mice has built a career satirizing the many types of people and situations that make Jakarta so unique, for better or for worse. Most known for his collaboration with fellow cartoonist Benny Rachmadi, his work gave scope to the city in a modernized way that no one else was able to successfully deliver at the time.

“Another thing that makes a piece of cartoon successful in its delivery is the fact that you need to be on the same page with your editors, so that they also understand what you mean and what you’re trying to say. I got the freedom to draw whatever I felt like mostly because of this. But if my editor and I were to disagree about a particular opinion, then obviously, there is a compromise for that,” he explained.

Some of his archival works, including those he made during his time with Benny, are on display at the exhibition. Some of the other cartoons displayed there are sharper than others. However, most of the politically-mocking works, are unremarkable and at times, boring. It is the cartoons that tried to address issues outside of the main ones listed that emerged the sharpest.

An example of this is Ika W. Burhan’s Fake, which depicted a family of four sitting at a table with happy-faced masks on, as their real, sad and tearful faces are concealed. This can be seen as a possible a jab at the Indonesian mindset, both young and old, which views marriage as the pinnacle of one’s life and having children the pinnacle of one’s happiness.

Meanwhile, Ika’s other displayed work, titled Terror Among Us, successfully notes the subtle terror that stalks the safety (and innocence) of our children. Out of all the cartoons that are displayed here, Ika’s is probably the sharpest because it doesn’t really feel like her work puts the artist on a higher moral level as the subject it is trying to mock.

Visitors can get that feeling from several works, where it seems the creators feel like they are better than the ordinary people they are mocking. And that is probably where the art of caricature is compromised. Once the artist puts themselves higher than the subject, the message will likely be lost in the process.

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