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Author delivers strong message about art, bigotry
Laksmi Pamuntjak (Courtesy of Laksmi Pamuntjak)Prominent Indonesian author Laksmi Pamuntjak showed slides of the work of I GAK Murniasih, the late Balinese contemporary artist
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Laksmi Pamuntjak (Courtesy of Laksmi Pamuntjak)
Prominent Indonesian author Laksmi Pamuntjak showed slides of the work of I GAK Murniasih, the late Balinese contemporary artist. They contained pastel-colored paintings of men and women’s genitals as symbols of women’s erotic experiences.
“[Murniasih’s works] are extraordinarily bold, irreverent and confident. They make a case for art that dares to challenge, subvert and also say it the way it is,” explained Laksmi, who used the artist as her inspiration for Srikandi, or Siri, the protagonist of her latest novel Fall Baby.
Laksmi had prepared the slides to accompany her keynote address titled Claiming Ownership of One’s Freed Selves: Freedom, Art and Morality in Indonesia on Nov. 20 for the Indonesia Council Open Conference at the Australian National University in Canberra, a part of her Australian book tour.
In her speech, Laksmi used art as the entry point to talk about grim issues in Indonesia: bigotry and censorship.
“The first part of the title comes from a line in Toni Morrison’s 1993 novel Beloved that says, ‘Freeing oneself is one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self is another’. Not only it is a phrase very close to my heart, it is also the perfect gist for what I wanted to say about art and how it can give us hope in a time when bigotry is on the rise and civil liberties are increasingly in peril,” she said in an email interview with The Jakarta Post.
“I say this because despite some of the necessary and welcome changes [President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo] has made to his new Cabinet, I see our country backsliding on the very issues we elected him for in the first place — human rights, religious tolerance, a quality of democracy and a tougher stance toward hard-line Islamic groups — issues we had given him much leeway on to tackle only in his second term.”
“His continued support for the regressive amendments to the Criminal Code and the founding statute of Indonesia’s Corruption Eradication Commission [KPK] encapsulates this problem.”
Such concerns formed the basis of Fall Baby which was published last month by Penguin Random House. It is the sequel to her first novel, the critically acclaimed Amba (The Question of Red).
She worked on her most recent novel from 2015 to 2017 as she divided her time between Berlin and Jakarta. While writing, she saw “the steady encroachment and the mainstreaming of conservative Islamic values on Indonesian cultural life”. The society had become polarized on issues of race, religion and ethnicity in the months leading to the conviction of former Jakarta governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama for blasphemy case in 2017.
Laksmi cited the removal of a painting by Galam Zulkifli titled Seri Ilusi #The Indonesia Idea from the Terminal 3 of Soekarno-Hatta International Airport for featuring the leader of the now-defunct Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) DN Aidit in 2016; the forced closure by the police of a South Sulawesi-wide cultural event organized by the Bissu transgender priest community in 2017; and the decision made by the Ancol Dreamland amusement park last March to cover the breasts of two mermaid statues that have existed for 15 years.
“There was a seeming return to old New Order tropes of neurosis and paranoia and repression,” she said, adding that TV programs targeting pious Muslims were all the rage while censorship of TV children’s programs was on the rise.
She argued that art was essentially about ways of seeing, which may different for each person.
“Whether or not we assimilate art into political praxis, whether or not we weave politics into our artistic practice, whether or not we engage with art at all, we see and look at and read our world according to what we know and what we believe.
“This is why all efforts to impose a singular worldview on humanity, the way many hard-line religious groups have tried to do to the vast diversity that is our Indonesia, are doomed to futility.”
In the speech, Laksmi also argued that art was about a “species of remembering”. She cited the touring exhibition Museum Tanpa Tanda Jasa (Unsung Museum) that traveled the country starting September 2016 with the miniature versions of banned, destroyed, removed or censored artwork of the past.
Among them were the Pinkswing Park by Agus Suwage and Davy Linggar which was attacked by the Islam Defenders Front (FPI) in 2015 as blasphemous and pornographic and Dadang Christanto’s They Gave Evidence, a 2012 installation of naked ceramic figures with outstretched arms holding the remnants of victims of political violence.
She also presented artwork exhibited at both the Yogyakarta and Jakarta Art Biennales in 2017 that responded to Ahok’s highly politicized persecution.
“These events showed most starkly how art could become a powerful medium through which to reflect on Indonesia’s long and painful history of anti-Chinese violence and to protest the death of tolerance and justice,” she said.
Speaking to an audience of about 200 people, which contained political scientists, historians, sociologists, anthropologists, comparative literature experts, art historians and postgraduate students, Laksmi also showed images of student protests across Indonesia in September, especially those against the proposed Criminal Code.
Indonesia specialist David T. Hill from Murdoch University in Perth attended the event. He said the speech was important as it would raise further conversation to challenge the values of the conservative forces in Indonesia.
“[Laksmi] took on some challenging issues, but she did it in a thoughtful, sophisticated manner,” he told the Post in a phone interview.
Jacqui Baker from the Indonesia Council Open Conference said that openness and critical thought have been increasingly met with hostility in both Australia and Indonesia.
“We see a narrowing of the political space within which to debate and contest ideas. In Australia, academic freedom has noticeably degraded. We sew these dynamics too in Indonesia where the new research laws and presidential power over rectors are the most recent manifestations in a long slow erosion of academic freedom,” she said in a text interview.
“Laksmi reminded us that we academics have much to learn from Indonesia’s artists who have responded to censorship, destruction and threats with persistence, creativity and enormous courage.”
At the event, Laksmi also read excerpts from the novel that included scenes of protagonist Srikandi gazing at a painting by maestro S. Sudjojono of his first wife Mia Bustam, who was also a painter in her own right.
“I chose some excerpts that highlight the ways in which we can remember by interpreting a certain painting or artwork,” she said.
Originally written in English, the novel was first published in Germany in September 2018 under the title Herbstkind (Autumn Child), while the Indonesian translation is expected to appear early next year with the title Srikandi.
Laksmi is now working on Kitab Kawin (The Book of Marriage), a compilation of stories about women in relationships, including extramarital affairs, bourgeois relationships, domestic abuse and child marriage. The stories came from her research with activists who have done advocacy work with victims.
“Kawin can mean two things: marriage or the exchange of vows and the act of copulation itself. I want to play around with these double meanings,” she said. (ste)
