 Apr-Jun 2006 |
Whimsical protestTransforming rubbish into political artHelen Pausacker
On the shadow puppet screen large black bulldozers
destroy the last remaining tree on earth, while Semar — the Javanese
clown-servant, himself a god descended to earth — scrambles around,
trying to avoid the dozers. Against these black shadows, four humans move
like robots, dressed in white and wearing gas masks and flashing electronic
devices. They tend china cows and ride bicycles.
But eventually there is no space on earth for such
simplicity. War breaks out. The actors bring out an American bomb, a gun, a
chainsaw and a Javanese kris, or ceremonial knife. The dark shadows of
monsters dance on the screen as the human figures fight and destroy each
other. The world winds itself into a frenzy and eventually self-destructs.
Such was Heri Dono’s performance, entitled Licking the Ozone, held as part
of the Melbourne Fringe Festival in 2005. Through a combination of shadow
puppets, mechanical devices, human actors and music, he criticised the
modern world. The performance was without dialogue; the chanting of the
dalang (puppeteer) was the only human voice.
Art and politics
Heri was born in 1960 in Jakarta. His artistic talent
was not encouraged in childhood — he was even punished for drawing in
the margins of his exercise books in primary school. His artistic ambitions
undeterred, he spent seven years in the 1980s at the Indonesian Institute
of Arts (ISI) in Yogyakarta, followed by two years learning wayang, or
shadow puppetry, from the prominent dalang, Sukasman. He has since held
numerous exhibitions in Indonesia and influenced a number of Indonesian
artists. He jokes that he has created a style he calls ‘Heri
Donoism’, shortened in the Indonesian manner to
‘HeDonism’. His work is held in public galleries all over the
world, and he has been artist-in-residence in Japan, Canada, England, the
United States, New Zealand and Australia. He was one of the artists chosen
to represent Indonesia at the Cultural Olympiad in Athens in 2004.
Heri’s art is inseparable from his political
views, which encompass both Indonesian and global issues. On a global
level, he is concerned about war, the environment and the pace of modern
life. In Indonesia he has been particularly concerned with freedom of
speech and thought. His work is subtle and infused with humour — it
conveys strong messages but also brings a smile to the viewer’s face.
Heri lived his formative years in the repressive
Suharto era, in an environment of stultified thinking and learning by rote
from textbooks. His rebellion against those times can be seen in works such
as Fermentation of the Mind (1994), which shows nine wooden primary school desks, with 18
heads nodding mechanically as if falling asleep. In post-Suharto times,
Heri’s work continues to criticise this dullness of mind. Shock Therapy for Political Leaders (2004) (pictured) reflects the concern of the Indonesian people
that politicians are still not serving them. In his installation Interrogation (1999),
figures are shown on television screens with rifles pointing at them,
suggesting that since the fall of the New Order, it is the mass media not
the government that is repressing people’s thinking.
Environment and modern lifestyle
Heri’s concern for the environment and pace of
modern life is also evident in his personal life. He prefers the slower
pace of bicycle riding to modern transport in Yogyakarta, where he lives
when he is not artist-in-residence overseas. Yet Heri is not a pastoral
artist. His work frequently involves simple, visible, mechanical devices
made from second-hand recycled material. This is used to provide a critique
of the twenty first century obsession with superficially simple but
extraordinarily complex devices — cars full of complex machinery
hidden under the bonnet and electronic devices run by complicated computer
chips.
He says: ‘At the market in Yogya, you can buy
broken bits of old clocks and other mechanical devices by the kilogram;
they are no longer bought as individual items. At the next stall vegetables
are also sold by the kilogram.’ Just as the cook will turn these raw
ingredients into a new dish, so Heri creates his art from his mechanical
bits.
To create the devices that animate his work, he
collaborates with clock and radio repairers. Heri explains his recycling in
terms of Javanese animist belief, where trees, objects and places are seen
to have a spirit. ‘Many see the broken clocks and other mechanical
devices as rubbish, but by creating art from them, I try to revive their
spirit.’ While in Australia, Heri has also tried to revive the spirit
of old, discarded material. He made a kayon, or tree-shaped wayang prop,
from a cardboard election poster for the now-discarded Labor leader, Mark
Latham (see back cover).
Protest against war
For the 2004 Cultural Olympiad in Athens, Heri created a multimedia installation, entitled Trojan Horse (see photo). Toy-like soldiers parachute from a large cardboard horse, which has aeroplane wings. The gift-horse’s mouth opens to reveal a pilot. Heri uses the
Greek legend to criticise the
invasion of Afghanistan and
Iraq in the
aftermath of 9/11. Other protests have been more direct. A recent painting, Attacking
the Innocent, drawn in a naive style, shows a woman with two children, being shot at by military on the ground and in the air. The green soldiers from the
Trojan Horse are again shown parachuting to the ground.
Heri’s political analysis is not just
international and national in its concerns. It also focuses on his own role
in the world — at once internationally acclaimed, but also very
small. In
Installations and performance art
A Little Doll (2003-2004) (pictured), Heri portrays the artist as Superman, with his red cape. The artist, who is the centre of attention, is depicted as a doll sitting in the lap of a giant blue-haired girl, while a four-eyed monster photographs him and a spotlight shines on him. Heri draws inspiration from Western cartoons, in his style of drawing, the borrowing of individual characters, the humour and the lack of need to be bound to reality. ‘A cartoon character can be squashed flat, and then jump up and continue running,’ he comments. Western cartoon figures are not Heri’s only influence. Javanese wayang figures, which represent the human figure as flat and stylised, have also strongly influenced his work.
Heri was one of the pioneer installation and
performance artists in Indonesia. ‘As a student,’ he says,
‘I was attracted to the idea of installation art, but it was not
on the curriculum and the word ‘instilasi’ hadn’t even
entered the Indonesian language. Together with friends, I experimented with
installation as an extracurricular activity.’ This interest was
inspired by such international movements as Dada in Europe. Like Heri,
Dadaists blurred the lines between painters, writers, dancers and
musicians, and were not aiming to produce works of beauty, but rather to
challenge society with political and social protest. Heri was also
influenced by Gestalt psychology, which states that the physical,
biological, psychological and symbolic elements within a person are so
unified that the differing elements cannot be separated. This combination
of elements influenced not just his desire to combine different art forms
into one, but also his belief that art and politics cannot be separated.
Heri recognised that the Dadaists’ combination of art, theatre and
music was also present in his own Javanese tradition. Both these influences
are obvious in his Licking the Ozone performance. But the humour in all his work mirrors
the way that punakawan (clown-servants) in a wayang performance make fun of
the nobility, inserting political comments through jokes.
Heri Dono has deservedly received wide international
acclaim. His work in all mediums ranges from the personal to the political,
but always with an element of the whimsical. He is a gregarious artist
who likes to involve members of the wider community in his work —
from the clock-repairers in Yogyakarta to the Melbourne-based Australian
and Indonesian actors and musicians in his Fringe Festival performances.
Heri believes that all people are artists, and that they feel less distance
from art if they can participate in its creation rather than be simply
spectators. Far from punishing children for scribbling in the margins, he
is devoted to using his art to inspire and invite participation.
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