Made Suarimbawa Dalbo, Tanda Jejak Tangan (Handprint mark)

Sanggar Dewata Indonesia, the group of artists that for decades has embodied mainstream Balinese art, is finally facing up to the reality that Bali is changing and its art has to take that into account.

The notion of change and art'€™s response to it is the central theme of the Sanggar Dewata Indonesia exhibition at the Agung Rai Museum in Bali.

Gone are artworks showing traditional dancers and processions of exotic Bali. Gone is the endeavor to express Balinese identity primarily through abstract-looking Hindu symbols.

Gone, in other words, is the affirmation of a central Balinese '€œdifference'€ that had always seemed so necessary, if only because it was constantly reiterated and repeated as something inherent and fundamental to any Balinese art.

If traditional '€œBali'€ remains present in the latest exhibited works, it is only as a kind of nagging worry.

So at last then, Sanggar Dewata Indonesia has recognized that every aspect of its society '€” its culture, its memory and systems of representation, its post-agrarian and predominately tourist-propelled economy, and the increasingly multiethnic composition of its people '€” is gripped in a process of fundamental transformation.

Budi Agung Kuswara'€™s Revolusi Industri (Industrial revolution)

This awareness of the change and flux in Bali is startlingly late-coming. Created in 1970, the Sanggar Dewata was at its inception a product of the Soeharto regime'€™s program of cultural engineering.

The focus of Sanggar Dewata was to be on '€œtradition'€ rather than modernity, stability rather than change, aestheticism rather than social message and consensus-building rather than expression of social tension.

In the mind of the regime, art was a tool of '€œdevelopment'€ rather than a means to express the dynamics of real life.

In a few cases, this philosophical bent produced art of some considerable quality. The work of I Nyoman Gunarsa, Made Wianta, Nyoman Erawan, Made Djirna springs immediately to mind and these successes were achieved mainly through underlining of the cultural richness and depth of Balinese identity.

However, the art produced under the above-mentioned philosophical program also functioned to cover up the reality that the regime'€™s policies were creating. Thus at the very same time the regime endeavored to establish Bali'€™s uniqueness in the consciousness of Indonesia and the world, the island was being systematically taken over by big tourism capital and shaken down to its very roots in the process.

Before this present exhibition, the issue of change and capitalism was raised ten years ago by a small band of artists, the Taksu group. But because this group was leftist in its political orientation, its warnings went unheeded.

Wayan Gede Budayana'€™s Mask Reconstruction

Today, having become suddenly '€œaware'€ of the reality of fundamental change, and letting go of its obsession with tradition, Sanggar Dewata, historically the most prominent artists'€™ association in Bali, is shaking the bells of the small island'€™s art world.

The works exhibited at the ARMA present themselves to the observer as something like a shopping list of the questionable transformations to which Bali is presently being subjected.

Sudarna Putra'€™s Not for Sale bluntly denounces the commoditization of land. And abstract painter Mahendra Mangku'€™s Synthetic Grass is a damning condemnation of the ecological damage inflicted upon Bali in the light of a rapidly metastasizing tourist economy.

The commoditization of art is the topic of artist Budi Agung Kuswara'€™s two installations, the first of which displays a repetition of jual-ambil-proses (process of taking and selling), and the other portraying a frame broken into pieces.

Also of some interest are the works of Made Arswendo Aji and Wayan Gede Budayana that underline the mental transformation undergone by the Balinese throughout their period of change. These works show the harsh faces of people falling prey to egotism and denounce through striking leather and metal mask displays the lies and treachery that are a part and parcel of capitalist modernity.

Made Gede Putra'€™s Path of fhe Paradise

The ambiguity of today'€™s Bali is best expressed in Wayan Gede Suanda Sayur'€™s Hay Fortress, which exposes with great immediacy through the contradiction between the shape of the fortress and its material the true fragility of Bali'€™s supposedly staunch and resilient culture and society.

The mood is a thoroughly dark one and only the works of Dewa Jodi Saputra and Putu Suardana show some positive longing for preserved harmony. In general however, this exhibition betrays the deep disquiet felt by an artistic community witnessing a changing Balinese world over which they have no control. It is no surprise then that when not expressing anxiety, the feelings of impotence and condemnation are the ones that most fully reveal themselves.   

The SDI ARMA exhibition, which runs until July 8, signifies the maturation of a new generation of Balinese artists.

They have grown up in an urbanized Bali very different from the rural Bali of their parents and ancestors. Their culture is that of the cellphone and internet more than that of puppet show theater and the economy often claims a more prominent place in their lives than that of their ancient religion.

They have stopped dreaming about Bali and have grown out of their wish to perpetually reinvent tradition. Perhaps in the future, some of them will turn to '€œpersonal'€ or aesthetic expression, but for the time being they act as witnesses to what they see around them. It behooves us to take notice both of their work and the changes and transformations that they denounce.

'€” Photos by W. Seriyoga Parta