Experience at Jakarta Biennale
I have written a very, veeeeery long article about this, about four long paragraphs over three hundred words each, and Wix completely erased it. Note to self: NEVER USE COMMAND + Z WHEN YOU ARE WRITING AN ARTICLE. So here I go again.
So last Monday we went to the Jakarta Biennale at Gudang Sarinah. The theme was "Maju Kena, Mundur Kena", which means that whatever you do, there will always be something wrong about it (haters gonna hate?). The main themes were water, history and gender.
When you walk in you’d see an installation inspired by traditional Indonesian homes. It wasn’t very interesting, other than the size. I was, however, very interested in the photography. They were printed on translucent black and white film and hung all over the room, instead of splat-bang on a wall. I thought they were very emotional in their quiet solitude. One photograph displayed a rotting, peeling doorway. You can actually walk around the photographs and look at it reversed. The black-and-white and vignette filters lent the works a somber mood. The experience was akin to looking at the world from a different perspective.
Another photograph series featured a collection of urban scenes arranged in a circle. To view it you have to duck inside and spin yourself 360 degrees, which really allowed you to immerse the full magnitude of the scenes. Traffic jams were arranged right next to beaches and slums. It was pretty darn awesome.
Not sure if it would have been categorized as history, but one installation that really interested me was this dark room that had a white chair in the middle facing a video of a little child watching a soap opera (a sinetron). It reminds me of that one Oscar Wilde essay---what was it---“Life imitates Art more than Art imitates Life.” (not sure if that’s the exact line but it’s something like that.)
I think it was brilliant. You know how we put lemon slices and mint leaves in our water just because it’s popular in Pinterest? Or how gamers start wearing those bulky headphones and talking really loud when they play because of YouTube gamers? This installation is sort of like that. It’s about people imitating what they see on the media, because they want to copy the “ideal.”
A few other history-themed artworks to note: a collection of proletarian business signs on a pink background, from barbershops to hole-in-the-walls.
The water-themed works were more interesting. There was one installation that displayed oil barrels in an oil pool, with a post-apocalyptic background. Not sure if the oil was really oil, since it didn’t smell, but hey, that’s what imagination is for. Another installation featured an old-fashioned water pump; only instead of water it’s spewing oil-not-oil. There was a video that showed McDonald’s half-submerged in water. The place was flooded, and yet a table was set with Big Macs and fries and drinks, as if nothing was wrong. But I think my favourite one in the whole exhibition was the one where you walk into a dark room, and there are two videos playing on opposite walls, facing each other. In one video, texts were inserted into water, and as the words touch the liquid, they dissolve. With each text, the water becomes more and more saturated. On the opposite wall, a similar scene was being played, only this time with photographs. As each photograph was lowered into the swirling water, the ink dissolves and the water turns darker. It vividly reminds me of George Orwell’s “1984”---the idea that truths can so easily be erased and re-written. A world where language was destroyed in order to prevent rebellion. We think of ink as a permanent media, and yet here it’s so easily dissolved in the water. The calmness of the video did not help at all. It was a very disturbing sight, which is why I like it all the more.
The gender-themed artworks were really why we were there. See, for Comping Techniques, we were asked to create installations or functional items that reflects urban life. My group decided to take it from a different perspective---security. We’re going to tie in problems that relate to sexism and rape culture. The exhibition’s comics and parody posters were pretty interesting. It was supposed to resemble Fast and Furious movie posters, only instead of Vin Diesel crashing cars into other cars, we have a woman… crashing things into other things, I suppose. The effects were pretty heavy on tenebrism, which is the only thing I didn’t like about the posters. It seemed too heavy for the crash-boom-bang theme.
Truth be told, I didn’t really understand the comics, mostly because they involved some sort of ancient inner joke. The ones I did, though, weren’t very interesting. History-themed, it was heavy on the watercolours. I do prefer more straightforward, corrosive humour. Also, there were a few misspelled items, such as a banner that said “Corea” instead of “Korea.” Not sure if it’s meant to be that way (maybe the artist meant “cornea”?!) Also, in the first building, near the shops, there was a poster that compared traditional art to modern art. The modern art one said something along the lines of, “Modern artists didn’t think that art was made to intimidate the older styles,” which doesn’t really make sense, and is sort of ironic. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you meant imitate?
The week before we had gone to an exhibition in Grand Kemang Hotel. This exhibition was less stuffy and more explorative. If I could go again, I’d take more pictures and spend more time with the murals. I didn’t get the chance to really look at them closely. Especially since the Bandung Mural Festival is coming up and I’m going to be doing a mural there, so I need some inspiration, eep!
Overall, it was quite an interesting experience. There is a large variety of artists and medias, a good mixture between high art and street art. Comics are displayed equally alongside paintings, wooden sculptures next to trash assemblage. A refreshing eye-opener, and I will definitely be coming back next year.