Both artists feature stunning women surrounded by flowers but use different approaches and angles; traditional batik motifs for Nani and Western-influenced lifestyles for Neneng.

Nani Sakri, who was an icon in the Indonesian fashion world in the 1970s and 1980s and turned artist in the late 1990s, presented women's bodies with Javanese traditional batik motifs, such as parang, megamendung and jelamprang, and the flowery batik motifs of those developed in the coastal areas of Java.

Born in Yogyakarta in 1948, Nani Sakri comes from a family of batik makers. She studied graphic art at the Fine Arts Faculty at the Bandung Institute of Technology (1967-1970), and graduated cum laude majoring in painting at the Jakarta Arts Institute, in 2007.

Fun Fearless Girl by Neneng S. Ferrier. JP/Munarsih Sahana

In her works on display, she combines the beautiful, but not vulgar, figures of naked women among colorful batik motifs.

The curvy figures of the women look as if they are three-dimensional, with their hands holding pieces of the batik patterns.

"Batik for me is like a dictionary of knowledge about our local tradition, rich in high philosophical values," said Nani, explaining why she was interested in putting batik into her works. As a model, she often wore batik at various international fashion shows with Iwan Tirta.

She said she was proud of batik and started painting batik consistently in her art works after the Indonesian traditional fabric was claimed by neighboring country Malaysia.

She was very familiar with recreating batik motifs, as both her mother and grandmother were batik makers as well as innovators of traditional batik motifs by, among other things, applying stronger colors to some motifs.

As for the naked bodies, Nani admitted she had simply become used to the subject of body language, both as a model herself for years and later teaching the subject to younger models until today.

"If they are not naked, they would look blurred in combination with the batik motifs. Anyway, their being naked does not look vulgar," Nani said of her paintings. Besides, the pictures of the women naked were of her own kind, she added.

Cloud of Love is the most eye-catching painting, showing a woman's face between megamendung batik motifs dominated by the color red. Her way of making figurative and realistic pictures with the two elements managed to make them look in harmony.

In Elevation and Balance and Yin and Yang Nani shows balance is important in body language, while in two other paintings, Reaching of Enlightenment and Experiencing Jonah, Nani tries to convey a deeper meaning through symbols.

On the other hand, the beautiful women in Neneng's works are more of a portrayal of cosmopolitan women. Fun Fearless Girl, adopting the motto of a famous women's magazine, shows a beautiful woman with red hair in a classy fashion style, complete with a necklace made of real marble stones.

She was inspired by the modern urban lifestyle as shown in the TV series Sex in The City, particularly the character of Samantha Jones played by Kim Cattrall who represents the "girl power" of a strong, independent personality who loves herself, said Neneng, who spent years living in San Francisco and studied fine arts at the Academy of Art.

Born in Jakarta, with painting and drawing her hobby since childhood, Neneng started as a self-taught artist. She joined numerous exhibitions in Indonesia, and internationally in Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, Brunei, Korea, Hong Kong, Beijing, Bangladesh and Malaysia.

A fun-spirited, fearless woman is seen in Cheer Up Ur World, with a depiction of a young, slim woman clad in a pink fashionable outfit surrounded by three men.

All the women look in perfect shape, well-groomed and expensively clad, including in Deep Thought, showing a long-haired young woman in a long, low-cut, off-the-shoulder, green dress.

In addition to beautiful modern women, Neneng paints flowers, butterflies and cute babies. All related to women, she said, namely because of their beauty and vulnerability.

"Women deliver babies, which become the women's responsibility," she said, adding that she did not have the heart to draw pictures of lower class women who suffer.

The vulnerability of a baby is shown in Do I Know, the picture of babies sleeping or playing on an arrangement of stones that look as if it would easily fall.

"The baby does not even know he is in danger, and it is our *the mothers'* responsibility to guide them to understand *the difficulty in* life," Neneng explained.

Rupa Rasa

A joint exhibition by Nani Sakri and Neneng S. Ferrier
until Feb. 28
Tembi Rumah Budaya
Jl. Parangtritis Km 8.4 Sewon, Bantul,
Yogyakarta
Open every day 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Popular

Online crackdown haunts Indonesia protests

No shortcuts for traffic jams

Shell, BP pumps run dry in Jakarta as import caps bite