Banjir Jakarta (Jakarta Floods) by Ketut Sudila

Indonesia’s legendary painter Raden Saleh (1807-1880), for example, painted Banjir di Jawa (A Flood in Java) in 1863, which depicts dozens of people clinging to a rooftop to escape the raging floodwater below.

Sunaryo’s Jakarta Tenggelam 2002 (Jakarta Drowned 2002) is an interesting example of a more abstract take on floods, with the whole of Jakarta — in the form of an aerial map or photo — being inundated by brownish rain and tidal waters.

Jakarta’s massive flood in 2002 also prompted Ketut Sudila to record it from Bali, where he observed Jakarta on the television. He created Banjir Jakarta (Jakarta Floods) in a traditional decorative style. It was a major highlight exhibited at the Indofood Art Awards 2003 in Jakarta.

Following the Bandung flood disaster in 2016, dozens of Fine Art Alumni Association (IASR) artists of the Bandung Institute of Technology held a flood-themed exhibition. Tisna Sanjaya presented his installation with all kinds of household furniture scattered and drifting erratically.

Apart from expressing sadness, protests against the government and negligent people as well as self-indignation, some works appear with a touch of humor, including one by Otto Djaya (1913-1994).

In the 1980s, he humorously depicted Jakarta floods with Petruk (a clown character in the shadow puppet tradition) carrying a sexy woman across an inundation. Both laughing, as if they were saying, “It’s enjoyable to be flooded.”

Flood catastrophes have also inspired many artists from around the world.

Some saw them in spiritual terms as a terrible natural force controlled by God, while others viewed them from the social angle as humans’ intelligent way of facing the natural challenge.

A work by Theodore Gericault (1791-1824), Le Radeau de la Meduse (Raft of the Medusa), is an important example. This work was inspired by an event that took place in 1816. During this period, in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa, a tsunami overwhelmed all the vessels sailing there.

One of them was a passenger ship with about 100 people on board. They would have been saved if the ship’s crew members had not grabbed lifeboats to save themselves. This scandal amid the tsunami was depicted by Gericault on his canvas, with dozens of passengers collapsing on a deadly raft — a torn wooden plank — in the ocean.

Medusa has become the most famous work of the Romantic-genre painter, not only acclaimed as a narrator of the most horrible natural events, but also as a documenter of humans’ moral value and mental attitude in the face of calamities.

The same descriptions were also made by Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), a painter and graphic artist in the Edo era of Japan. When he was on a long journey, he produced legendary graphic artworks titled 36 Views of Mount Fuji. The most amazing of them was The Great Wave Of Kanagawa. Hokusai pictured the terrifying wave rolling against the background of a dwarfed Mount Fuji.

Hokusai thus already imagined that the huge wave was the precursor of a tsunami, with its threatening deluge. What was suggested by Hokusai later frequently occurred in Japan, including the one devastating Touhoku northeast of Honshu Island in March 2011.

Prof. AD Pirous, an artist from Aceh who painted Bibir Pantai Sisa Tsunami Meulaboh (The Post-Tsunami Shore of Meulaboh), said visual artists found water-related disasters as inspirational for a number of reasons.

“First, it’s because visual artists as social beings are always inclined to document events. Second, it’s because they have the inner urge to crystalize their empathy in the form of visual artworks. Empathy in visual art is usually eternal.” Pirous said.

— Photos by Agus Dermawan T.

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