In an interview early this month in Yogyakarta, Mujahidin revealed that his name, which means “defender of religion”, has infused a stigma that has followed him from the earliest moments of his life. This had led him to search for the truth of his religion, trying to decipher its many layers.

“Following the situation in Palestine and the Middle East, I felt deep concern that such a situation would one day come to Indonesia”, he said.

In a continuation of his paper cuts in the arabesque-style layering of AK47 weaponry, which deceivingly appear as mere ornaments, it is as if these layers were moving in intensity as we look at them from the upper surface to the lower surfaces.

“I wanted to show how violence intensifies,” says the artist of his works titled Strenuous, Vigorous and Intense.

The Pulse by Mujahidin Nurahman (Lawangwangi Gallery/File)

The same emotion is found in The Pulse, featuring a lamp pulsating to an intensifying heartbeat.

As he pursued his explorations, he found readings elaborating the inner urges of a man exposed in the desire to ruin and kill. He said he even found it in children.

“When bored with a toy, little kids would smash it to the floor,” he said.

A Lady, a digital print featuring a woman covered in a black burqa against a decorative background, referenced Leila Khaled, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) who came to the public’s attention for her role in a 1969 hijacking and one of four simultaneous hijackings the following year as part of Black September.

It is not so unusual anymore for women to be heroic in this sense, as the case of the Surabaya bombings laid bare, where a wife followed her husband into the act of suicide bombings.

“It’s an example of how we still live in a system of patriarchy by which women must follow what men want,” Mujahidin said.

A Lady by Mujahidin Nurahman (Lawangwangi Gallery/File)

In his curatorial notes, Rifky Effendy referenced Roland Barth, a French literary theorist, philosopher, linguist, critic and semiotician who has written on instinct as a behavior and reaction toward certain stimuli.

“The work Proud, featuring a wooden coffin with ornamental windows on the upper surface showing a transparent skeleton with hands on the chest, for instance, represents the power of ideology within man, making him willing to die for such ideology, making the sacrifice of death something of beauty, and the issue of suicide bombers an aesthetic ritual shaped as a doctrine of death as a matter of pride and glory,” he writes.

Proud by Mujahidin Nurahman (Lawangwangi Gallery/File)

According to the artist, such icons are shaped into myth, fulfilling the need for symbols that fan the flames of a movement. In Scratch, an interactive work in the form of a wooden disc with ornaments on its surface, there is a lever attached to a stone. Here, the audience can pull the lever, after which the ornamental surface is scratched, which the artist intends as a metaphor for violence that throughout the passage of civilizations has happened again and again.

Mujahidin goes on to include the audience’s participation in the work The One You Love or Hate, consisting of a row of bullets, inviting participants to write a name on each bullet, suggesting in fact that the killer instinct would kill the namesake, even if it’s only a killing in the mind.

Born in Bandung, the 36-year-old artist received his bachelor’s degree of fine art from the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) in Indonesia in 2007. The recipient of the prestigious Bandung Contemporary Art Awards (BaCAA) wants to show his work in as many as possible places, at home and internationally.

“I would like to spread my message through art, that Islam is not only what meets the eye, for there are many layers.”

His intricate works made with ultimate precision has earned him many accolades.

“I like the process,” he said, waving away the suggestion that it might be a form of meditation.

“Every work, I try to make it myself unless I don’t have the skill to do so, like in the case of the bullets made of resin. In such a case, I seek the help of my assistant, but even so, I try to acquire the skill and do it myself,” he said.

The exhibition, running from May 3 to June 7, is a collaborative effort between Lawangwangi, Art Sociates and Langgeng Gallery. It is held at Langgeng Art Gallery, Jl. Suryodiningratan 37, Suryodiningratan Matrijeron, Yogyakarta.