The first day of the 13th Ubud Writers and Readers Festival (UWRF) on Thursday saw the opening of a lontar (palm-leaf manuscript) and visual arts exhibition, a testament to the festival’s commitment to showcasing the country’s rich and diverse cultural legacy.

“Lontar manuscripts are the repository of our ancient lore and wisdoms while visual art works —paintings and three-dimensional pieces — are often created as a response to or being inspired by literary works,” UWRF director Janet DeNeefe said.

“We would like to highlight the rich landscape of Indonesian culture as well as the inter-connectivity between literature and other art fields,” she said.

The lontar exhibit is presented by the Hanacaraka Society, a non-profit organization founded by Balinese scholar Sugi Lanus and manned by 15 young researchers.

“We are focusing on educational programs, including offering classes on lontar reading and writing, in an effort to make the island’s youngsters fall in love with this type of manuscript,” he said.

The society also carries out a long-term program of cataloguing and reading lontar in the possession of families across Bali.

The exhibit, held at UWRF’s Taman Baca compound, features 16 sets of lontar with themes ranging from religious incantations, a manual on offerings, techniques for increasing inner power, traditional medicine and healing, to classical literary texts. The displayed manuscripts are part of the society’s 112-set lontar collection.

The event also offers a regular demonstration on lontar writing with the use of a tiny, very sharp knife to etch letters.

Later in the evening, a visual art exhibition was officially opened at the spacious compound. Co-organized by Militant Arts, a group of 30 young Balinese artists, the exhibition features more than 20 paintings and 10 installations.

Militant Arts members Made Kaek, Putu Bonuz, Made Gunawan, Teja Astawa, Made Supena, Lekung Sugantika, Galung Wiramaja, and Sujana Kenyem have already made their mark on the island’s fine art landscape, making the exhibit a fascinating combination of established voices and promising talents.

“All of the works are aesthetic responses to the UWRF’s major theme of ‘Tat Tvam Asi’ [I am you, you are me]. Naturally, they are the visual metaphors of human solidarity, love and compassion,” Militant Arts head Kabul Suasana said.

The installations, set up at a sloping lot facing the idyllic Campuhan Ridge, provided the festival’s compound with a stunning visual marker.

The highlight of the opening was a dance performance featuring Jasmine Okubo and children with hearing disabilities. Okubo, well-known for her daring contemporary pieces, used hand signals to communicate and train the children to perform the choreography.

Earlier in the morning, respected Indonesian author and journalist Seno Gumira Ajidarma appealed to his fellow writers to come up with a new approach for “Tat Tvam Asi” during the festival’s keynote speech at Neka Museum.

“Despite the sophisticated technology we currently possess, this world of ours has yet to purge the primal instinct to destroy and conquer. Events in the past several years show that there is a tendency to reinforce and renew that instinct,” he said.

“This is a period that calls for a bold way of thinking to contest that tendency. ‘Tat Tvam Asi’ is a legacy from the past, but with a new approach we shall make it relevant again”.

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