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About time: Indonesia rediscovers an overlooked renaissance man
Harijadi Sumadijaja, a midcentury social realist artist sidelined during the Soeharto era, is only beginning to be recognized.
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Olden days: The mural “Kehidupan di Batavia” (Life in Batavia) shows public life in what is now Jakarta during the Dutch colonial era. (National Gallery/Courtesy of Galeri National)
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armers in conical hats evoke idyllic Indonesian rural life as they reap their rice paddies. Nearby, a group of village women carry their wares to the market past grazing water buffaloes.
These scenes come from the “Sarinah Relief”, a 12-by-3 meter relief uncovered at Jakarta’s Sarinah department store in October 2020. Workers found the stone and cement structure in the shopping center’s warehouse after it closed for renovations in June of last year.
President Sukarno is thought to have commissioned the relief, along with mosaics and other art, before Sarinah opened for business in 1966.
The structure combined serene yet vibrant vignettes characteristic of Borobudur temple with the heroic social realist style of the Selamat Datang (Welcome) and West Irian Liberation monuments in Jakarta, which were created by Indonesian sculptor Edhi Sunarso on Sukarno’s commission in 1959 and 1964, respectively.
The “Sarinah Relief” is one of the 29 works of art featured in Poros (Axis) No. 3, an Indonesian National Gallery exhibition of public art in the early years of the country’s independence.
The event marks a number of firsts. It is the gallery’s first entirely online, 24 hour exhibition, and the works, which are being restored by the National Gallery, are not located at its premises in Jakarta.
Some of the pieces, such as the “Sarinah Relief”, have only recently been uncovered, along with a large-scale mural found in the Jakarta History Museum.
