Exhibits take on human rights struggle

Margaret Agusta ,  Contributor ,  Jakarta   |  Sun, 06/15/2008 10:17 AM  |  Arts & Design

If Indonesia's artists had their way, history would never repeat itself, at least not the chaotic chapters written across this archipelago in suffering and blood in the decades between 1950 and now.

Yet, somehow, the headlines staring up at us over our breakfast coffee seem all too familiar, as if time has turned back on itself and is replaying the same, sad old stories of poverty, malnutrition, mismanagement of resources, shortages, corruption and blatant denial of human rights.

The long queues for rice of the early 1960s have given way in 2008 to long lines of harried housewives anxiously waiting for the kerosene they need to cook the day's meals.

The long-forgotten souls forcefully displaced for the construction of the Kedung Ombo dam toward and electrical installations the end of the 1980s are now being joined by the hundreds of Sidoarjo families driven from their homes by the flood of mud triggered by faulty oil and gas drilling procedures.

And, most recently, the news of the deaths of 21 small children in Indonesia's eastern regions, while Indonesia's infant and maternal mortality rate remain higher than those of its Southeast Asian neighbors, echoes the situation faced by Indonesia's poor in the years immediately following independence and through to the late 1970s.

While the current House of Representatives remains full of bickering politicians more concerned about jockeying for party advancement and cushy commission seats than about what is happening along the narrow alleys of the country's urban centers or the muddy paths of its most distant islands, and radical groups like FPI and JI continue to find enough leeway to suppress and terrorize those who do not follow their prescription for running the country.

Not too much unlike the political situation existing from the 1950s through to the early 1960s, and leading up to the bloody disaster of the September 1965 coup. Only the faces and names have changed; the behavior reflects things long hidden from view; secrets long kept; stories long untold.

In this context, the Semsar Siahaan exhibition at Cemara 6 Gallery, which ends today, and the exhibition of a group of rarely heard from artists scheduled to open at the National Gallery on Thursday, June 19, seem to take on a greater significance than any other art displays held in recent months.

The holding and the content of both exhibitions speak clearly of not only of Indonesia's art history, but of its political polarization, social turmoil and struggle to find a solid footing in an ever-shifting global landscape.

The "Liberation Art" of Semsar Siahaan, who worked intensely as both artist and human rights activists for two-and-a half decades before his death in 2005, has it roots in the social realism of artists like Djoko Pekik and Amrus Natalsya, whose works will be shown along with those of a number of artists who focus on social and political themes that are particularly relevant in the face of current events in the country.

Perhaps the most interesting element of the coming Sanggar Bambu 2 exhibition, outside of the messages about the rights of human beings to enough to eat, to shelter, to access to education and a way to earn a living, as well as to freedom of speech, is the fact that the artists showing have lived through huge chunks of Indonesian art history, with some even being both players and pawns in the chess game of Indonesian politics and social upheaval.

Amrus Natalsya, who primarily sculpts and carves reliefs from wood, and Djoko Pekik, who paints, in particular, have ample reason to relish the current atmosphere achieved through the long struggle for freedom of expression and human rights carried on by fellow artists for three decades and culminating in the Reformation Movement, which, since 1998, has set into place the democratic system and institutions that allow them the opportunity to show their works freely without censure or constraints.

Djoko Pekik and Amrus Natalsya are among the many artists of the 1960s, who, because of their political affiliations (some worked under the auspices of the Indonesian Communist Party's cultural arm known as LEKRA) and stances on social issues, were harassed, imprisoned, exiled or even killed.

From the mid 1960s through to 1998, when the exit from power of Soeharto (Indonesia's second president) neither Djoko nor Amrus could find a gallery or art space willing to display their works. Not that nobody cared, they simple did not dare show any sign of "fraternizing with the enemy" in the wake of the mass killings of leftists and others of "suspects" political leanings of late 1965 and through 1966, and the continuing detention and disappearances of the following three decades.

Now, 10 years since the Reform Movement began the difficult task of trying to set right so many wrongs, Amrus Natalsya, Djoko Pekik and other artists, whose struggle to express themselves creatively has been exceedingly long and difficult, will be showing their works publicly in an exhibition sanctioned and facilitated by a state institution.

So, just as one might be getting the feeling that history has gotten stuck in another cyclical mode, perhaps the very fact that two such powerful and important exhibitions are being held one after the other in both a private and a public venue, might serve to remind us of how much really has changed, and how vital it is for reformation to continue.

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