Singapore Biennale 2006
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Tuesday, October 29, 2002
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
BEYOND THE MODESTY
Solo Exhibition by Nindityo Adipurnomo
31 October – 16 November 2002
A gallery floor covered with black stones in the shape of traditional Javanese hairpieces – that is Nindityo Adipurnomo’s latest approach to Javanese culture.
Almost ten years ago, Nindityo started to explore the traditional Javanese hairpiece konde as a multi-layered symbol for contemporary Javanese society. One of his first artworks, “The Burden of Japanese Exotica” (1993), collected by the Singapore Art Museum in 1997, critically analysed the form and function of the konde. When I first met Nindityo in 1997, he was already planning to stop working with hairpieces and throw overboard the ‘burden’ of the konde-exotica. But since then, he has realized another series of work based on the konde, such as a cupboard for personal belongings and documents, or as a huge rattan construction with an elephant trunk. One may ask how is it possible to create so many artworks that keep using the same idiom without repetition. Nindityo has found the answer. He always attempts to confront his audience with different and unexpected aspects of the hairpiece, making it an open vehicle for new discussions and interaction.
During the last few years, Nindityo has applied different strategies of communication and interaction with people. Having parts of his work made by local artisans is one way he communicates and interacts with local villagers in Indonesia. For his series of rattan hairpieces, he worked with basket makers from a small village close to Yogyakarta. Also, the stone and wooden konde for Beyond the Modesty were made by local stonemasons and wood-carvers. The process of negotiating, discussing and then finding compromises on how to realize a certain idea or design is an important part of Nindityo’s process. And he is always happy to let other people play a role in the production of his work, trying to open up their minds and his own to new experiences.
When he first exhibited his rattan konde in Yogyakarta, Nindityo invited the basket makers to exhibit alongside him in the gallery. They had never been to such an event before. And Mas Waljiono, the stonemason who carved the first stone hairpieces, was asked to write a short comment about his cooperation with Nindityo for the publication, Tolerance (2002). Significantly, Mas Waljiono remarked the care and respect Nindityo expressed towards the carvers’ work.
In conservative and ritualised Javanese society women still wear hairpieces on certain ceremonial occasions. According to Nindityo, each hairpiece functions like some kind of ‘prehistoric microchip’ that indicates the social status of the bearer. In traditional Java, the hairpiece signifies whether a woman is married, single or divorced. In his work, “Portraits of Javanese Men” (2001) Nindityo points out that categorizing and judging people by their hair even affects Javanese men, indeed, affects everybody. His sepia coloured photo series shows Javanese men with their faces completely covered by hairpieces. Nindityo explains: “Unfortunately a hairpiece can get out of place sometimes. Then it slips in front of our mouth and threatens to choke us. Actually the hairpiece is more like a prison – that is how I show it in my pictures.” So the identity of the men portrayed is concealed by their hairpieces and the konde becomes a metaphor of non-communication, prejudice and intolerance in Javanese as well as in other societies.
Nindityo’s first series of stone hairpieces, which he also displayed on the floor, like his recent work for Beyond the Modesty, was titled “Step on Heirloom” (2001). The title was an open invitation for audiences to step on the stone konde and, in a sense, to trample Javanese culture. In Java, touching the head (or hairpiece) of someone you don’t know is considered impolite. The head is regarded as the holy part of the body, whereas feet have the lowest status. Simply to place hairpieces on the bare floor of a gallery space is already an offence against Javanese culture. But Nindityo exaggerates the offence by asking visitors to walk on them.
Whereas in the earlier works, people were asked to step on the stones still wearing shoes, people will be invited to take off their shoes at Beyond the Modesty. Nindityo will prepare bags in the form of different Javanese hairpieces. Each visitor will be invited to put his shoes inside a bag and carry them through the exhibition. On the gallery floor, Nindityo will also display big wooden hairpieces with a surface similar to health or massage sandals. So as people traverse and consider the symbolic konde, they will also enjoy a foot massage, or kind of acupressure.
When Nindityo first told me about this development, I wondered whether people in Europe, where Nindityo exhibited his stone konde for the first time, would be as willing to take off their shoes as, for example, people in Asia. If Indonesian artists exhibit their works abroad using symbols and icons borrowed from Indonesian culture, they have to combat clichés of the exotic. For Western eyes it could be difficult to understand Nindityo’s iconography; to read the formal language of the konde. On the other hand, if people already understand that Nindityo’s black stones do not represent abstract sculptures, a la Brancusi, but Javanese hairpieces, then the work won’t seem so strange. Hairstyling is a global popular culture and people anywhere in the world make reference to hair. And Nindityo’s konde may be understood not only within the scope of tradition but also in terms of today’s hair fashion.
- Alexandra Kuss
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another project by :
Plastique Kinetic Worms
61 Kerbau Road
Singapore 219185
Tel: 65 6 292 7783
Fax: 65 6 292 2936
Email: admin@pkworms.org.sg
URL: www.pkworms.org.sg
Open: Tuesdays – Saturdays 11AM - 6 PM
Closed on Sundays, Mondays & Public Holidays
with support :
Cemeti Art House
Jl. DI Panjaitan 41
Yogyakarta - Indonesia
Phone/Fax : +62 274 371015
Email : cemetiah@indosat.net.id
URL : www.cemetiarthouse.com
National Arts Council
140 Hill Street
MITA Building #03-01
Singapore 179369
Plastique Kinetic Worms presents....
ARTIST TALK by
NINDITYO ADIPURNOMO (Indonesia)
1 November 2002, Friday, 6:30PM
@ Plastique Kinetic Worms, 61 Kerbau Road
Kindly RSVP by 31 November, Thursday
email: admin@pkworms.org.sg
tel: 6 292 7783
fax: 6 292 2936
Monday, October 28, 2002
Digital works Feature
Flow of Consciousness - deoxy-ribonucleic acid chromatopgraphic soundscape by Chng Nai Wee
This is a model version viewable online. Click here.
The full work is a music synthesiser that receivers input from the chromatography maps of various genetic sequences that are stringed together.
Sunday, October 27, 2002
LOTUS KRAKATOA - A NEW EARTH EXPERIENCE
CERAMIC CREATIONS BY BARY CHA CHA
WITH PHOTO-PAINTINGS BY LEE JEN & BARY CHA CHA
SATURDAY 26TH OCT to SUNDAY 10TH NOVEMBER 2002
UTTERLY ART EXHIBITION SPACE 208 SOUTH BRIDGE ROAD LEVEL 2 SINGAPORE 058757
TEL: 6226 2605 MON-SAT 11.30 AM to 8 PM SUN 12 NOON to 5.30 PM
Ceramist Bary Cha Cha offers his latest lotus creations as a scenario – an alternative other-worldly setting formulated as an antidote to the urbanscape we live in. His smoky leaves, buds and blooms emerge from the extraterrestrial dreamscape he has devised with neo-volcanic intensity, yet soothing with the calm of pure form. Bary presents a portal to a vision of space-realism, a new earth where “there should be no segregation between art and the art of the living space”. The photo-paintings are a collaborative effort between Bary and vetran photographer Lee Jen. They embrace the periphery and complement the central garden setting to afford hyperrealistic interpretations of lotus bathed in alluring, yet ambiguous light and shadow. Are the flowers submerged in wisps of cloud or mist, ripples of water or an ether as yet undiscovered?
Artist Feature
Courtesy of National Arts Council 2001 Nokia Singapore Art Press Release
BLK 124 by Tang Da Wu, Lee Foo Koon, Ho Soon Yeen, Betsy Toh
Blk 124, Kim Tian Place
Block 124 is an ongoing, onsite collaborative work by Ho Soon Yeen, Betsy Toh, Lee Foo Koon and Tang Da Wu. The site that was chosen, at Block 124 Kim Tian Place, is an old HDB block of 3-room flats that is an anachronism in the midst of rising new blocks of flats. There are many associations to the said site: nostalgia, history, marginalisation, and displacement brought by urbanization. In the course of the following two months, the artists will document activities and movements at the site of the residents, and engage residents in the art-making processes. This work was performed in 2001.
Artist Feature
Courtesy of National Arts Council 2001 Nokia Singapore Art Press Release
THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD by Sylvia Goh Hwee Chieng and Benjamin Puah
Singapore River Promenade – Outside Asian Civilisations Museum, Empress Place and UOB Plaza
Public art is a term that refers to a type of artworks that is strategically located in common areas accessed by the general public such as parks, squares, and even atriums, stations or community centres. An integral aspect of public art is its unique relationship with the audience. Such art may act to transform a given environment, turning it from the familiar to one that provokes awareness about that given environment. It provides an aesthetic experience that opens up the audience to many interpretative possibilities. In The Yellow Brick Road, Sylvia Goh and Benjamin Puah have introduced a visual element that aims to disrupt our complacent regard for the Singapore River. A series of bright yellow laminates are placed on opposing sides of the Singapore River promenade to create an imaginary pathway. The reference to the popular children’s tale Wizard of Oz is not incidental. The artists have intended to inscribe into the given landscape – a site potent with a rich history, and cultural and economic significance – a virtual trail that facilitates not physical movements, but rather mental exercises for the audience regarding the nature of history, space and our association to them. This is to aid and allow multiple conceptual connections, as such that we may ponder on the past, present and future transformations of the historic site with differing intensities and interests.
Material sponsorship and technical assistance provided by 3M Scotchprint® Graphics. Presented with the kind courtesy of the United Overseas Bank and Asian Civilisations Museum at Empress Place.
Artist Feature
Courtesy of National Arts Council 2001 Nokia Singapore Art Press Release
EAT AWAY by Margaret Tan Ai Hua
Hilton Singapore (10 - 12 Dec 2001)
An interactive work about the breakdown of gender stereotypes and an embodied experience of art. In Eat Away, Margaret Tan offers to her audience the act of tasting and eating. For the artist, the sensual quality of chocolate conjures notions of richness, excess and indulgence. Shaped into male and female figures, Tan invites the audience to test out their own responses, being suddenly made aware of possible choices and thoughts that may be conjured up by the act of consuming.
For Tan, the aesthetic experience is to be induced by way of facilitating audience to act out and think up possibilities and meanings. Chocolate is chosen, according to the artist, as it is a sensual ingredient. The work, which also extends to the actual “eating” of the chocolate figures, suggests a place of indulgence, away from the cooking hearth that is a private space, into a more social space (the hotel) that is yet, a “home”.
Eat Away is sponsored by Hilton Singapore.
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