|
Tiara Dame Ruth Sirait: Sweet Lolly
Installation and Fashion Performance
Kedai Kebun Gallery, Yogyakarta Indonesia
July 5 - 30, 2001
reviewed by Megan Wilson
When I told people that I was going to be traveling
in Indonesia for five weeks this summer, the response rarely deviated
from two thoughts of mind. Those a bit familiar with the country through
the occasional news report would ask, "Aren't they having some sort political
problems there?" (To which the answer is an emphatic "yes.")
The second sort of reply I heard came from those who had visited the country
(Lonely Planet guide in hand) and offered "the shadow puppets,
Ramayana Ballet, and Gamelan are amazing." However, when I'd mention that
I was actually more interested in Indonesia's contemporary alternative
art scene and perhaps the influence that the country's political tension
has had on the work being made there, the unanimous response was "Do they
have an alternative art scene?" I wondered the same since I couldn't recall
ever having seen or read anything about contemporary art in Indonesia,
but I was determined to find out.
|
|
|
Bali, Indonesia (2001)
Photo
by Megan Wilson
|
|
I flipped through my ten-year-old collections of Artforum, ArtNews,
and Art in America, scouring both features and the review sections
for a headline reading "Indonesia," which proved to be fruitless. Research
on the Web produced an academic history of Indonesian art over the last
30 years — one that reflected interests and trends throughout the
art world during the same period (a rejection of modernism in the '70s,
a booming market in the '80s, and a heavily post-modern approach in the
'90s). I also found several essays specific to Indonesian concerns, mainly
the struggle between embracing and rejecting Western influence on their
contemporary art. However, nothing I came across gave me a sense of what
is happening NOW.
As is often the case, my best source came from a 'friend-of-a-friend'
who had lived in Indonesia and as luck would have it, is a contributing
writer to Latitudes Magazine, the best resource for contemporary
culture in Indonesia. Through Dan's connections, I was able to find a
thriving alternative arts community in Yogyakarta (pronounced Jojakarta)
on the island of Java.
"If you are going to Yogya your first top should be the Cemeti gallery
on Jl. Parankritis. These folks are the foundation of contemporary and
media art in Yogya." This was what I wanted to hear. So following Dan’s
suggestion, I stopped in at the Cemeti, where I was welcomed with ginger
candy and an invitation to sit down and hear about the city’s contemporary
arts community. Program Directors Alsyah Hilal and Sudgud Dartanto presented
me with several binders of slides from their past exhibitions and I was
struck by how similar the art in Yogyakarta was to work being created
in San Francisco, yet with a clear identity of its own. In addition, Hilal
and Dartanto gave me a list of alternative spaces I should check out.
 |
Sweet Lolly
(2001), Tiarma Dame Ruth Sirait
Photo by Megan Wilson |
|
As I walked into the Kedai Kebun Gallery to see Tiarma Dame Ruth Sirait's
installation, Sweet Lolly, I had no idea what to expect from a
show with that title by a young Indonesian artist and fashion designer,
in a third-world city known for batik.
Created from remnants of fine gray, orange, and
black shag carpet and installed in three attached sections on the central
wall from floor to ceiling, a winkin', feisty femme with curlers in her
fiery coif and hand on hip stares out at viewers, coquettishly daring
them to mess with her. Her stylish silver stretch midriff-baring tank
and mini-skirt are actual clothes and have been attached to the surface
of the rug, as have her silver platform moon boots that point playfully
inward at each other. In front of this devilish diva, an area rug of the
same gray shag sprawls across the orange cement floor with serpentine
scrawls of black and orange running through it and bringing to mind a
‘70s favorite — the game Snakes and Ladders. In one corner of
the gallery fur jackets made from pelts of leopard, mink, sable, and rabbit
hang from a fake fur-covered clothes rack and look like the coat check
of a Long Island country club. In the opposite corner a black mannequin
stands on a patch of black fur, draped in a short coat of the same fleece
and sports a fashionable bonnet that could only be described as Barbarella
meets Bambi with its sweetly cocked silver-lined fur ears.
The gallery is also openly connected to a
restaurant that becomes part of the installation through its orange and
black fur covered tables and chairs. Everything has a price tag attached
to it with the logo for Poleng Studio, Sirait's fashion design company
(Poleng is a Balinese cloth that’s black and white and used mostly
in traditional ceremonies to signify the philosophy of balance of dark
and light, day and night, earth and sky.) A table in the gallery offers
photographs taken at the opening, a vogue event filled with vampy vixens
struttin' their stuff in Poleng designs of fur and furor.
|
|
|
Sweet
Lolly (2001), Tiarma Dame Ruth Sirait
Photo by Tiarma Dame Ruth Sirait
|
|
I was delighted to see the blurring of fashion and
art, and delivered with such playful prance. Yet, I felt dazed and confused
after taking this all in - where was I? On the set of a Target commercial?
And what was this about? Just fashion, fun and foreign influence? Something
was amiss.
And then it hit me. It was all that fur, that oppressive fur in 85 to
95 degree year-round weather. Following this little epiphany, I read Sirait's
statement for the show:
"My home is adorned with a fur carpet. fur chairs, a fur table and every
trinket's covered with fur everywhere … sometimes it feels warm,
exclusive, sensuous, ticklish, but more often than not, it feels
hot and sticky and cramped and boring and just searing hot!
Even though it has sweet colors, enticing and inviting people
to enjoy its beauty … this suffocating homogeneity brings a cruel
hypocrisy … everything seems the same on this surface as it is the
surface indeed that is the only comprehensible reality now."
I considered the environment and climate described by Sirait -- the beauty
and intrigue contrasted by the cruelty and boredom. I also thought about
the observations that I had been making during my travels and the contradictions
between what I was learning from the artists I had met and the image of
Indonesia presented and reinforced through commercial interests. Then
I looked again at Sirait's cheeky work and could see that it was
about fashion, fun and foreign influence … yet with a bitter, sweet
twist.
|
|
|
Sweet
Lolly (2001), Tiarma Dame Ruth Sirait
Photo credit unknown
|
|
Tourism accounts for one third of Indonesia's economy. The effect is striking
— shop after shop filled with traditional hand-crafted works that
once held cultural significance beyond a price tag; temples littered with
candy wrappers and cigarettes; and cremation ceremonies that seem more
like press conferences with the intrusive presence of still and video
cameras on the arms of three-quarters of the attendees. The foreign impact
has also not been lost on the nation's cultural image. While visitors
stockpile as much of the culture as they can - sarongs, scarves, instruments,
carvings, music, photographs etc. -- to take back home, Indonesians are
expected to remain in the picture-perfect postcard image of island ambiance.
Additionally, tourist demands and currency for traditional arts such as
the gamelan, batik, and Legong dance have helped to create an artistically
stagnant identity for Indonesia.
Tiarma Dame Ruth Sirait is one of the artists
shaking that image up. Through its conceptual approach to pop culture,
high fashion and design, Sweet Lolly examines the foreign impact
on Indonesia's cultural landscape and offers an inspiring look at the
fresh work being created there in response — turning up the heat
for both the country and the contemporary art world.
Tiara Dame Ruth Sirait: Sweet Lolly, Installation
and Fashion Performance was on view July 5 - 30, 2001, Kedai Kebun Gallery
Jl. Tirodipuran no. 3, Yogyakarta, 376-114 Yogyakarta Indonesia
|
