VALENTINE WILLE FINE ART

essay

A VOICE OF RECKONING

Muhamed Yusuf speaks with the sanguineness of someone at peace with himself. As an artist, his work for the last decade has been committed to exposing difficult realities that exist in Indonesian society including corruption, environmental degradation and the continued deprivation of the underclass amongst a slew of other social ills . At times, it seems almost ironic that it should be in observing so much vice and poverty that Yusuf then musters the will and imagination to present a balanced and recuperative vision of a utopian social democracy. It is in how his vision becomes purer and clearer against the muddiness of reality that we may approach the body of works he has prepared for this exhibition.

Indonesia and I is Yusuf's second solo exhibition, and his first since 2005 when he exhibited 20 paintings in a sustained visual interpretation of Indonesian writer and social observer Pramoedya Ananta Toer's mytho-historic novel, Arok Dedes, at the former Komunitas Utan Kayu's Galeri Lontar in Jakarta. Published in 1999, Pramoedya's novel claims for Arok Dedes a heroic position a la Robin Hood – despised by the ruler of a 13th century east Javanese kingdom but loved by the people. The novel makes a barely veiled appeal for readers to critically examine events in their own times. Yusuf marks his affiliations with Pramoedya and other figures who have led social change, and who continue to galvanise social consciousness. Just as these figures may have had to stake contrarian positions in their lifetimes for their beliefs, the I in Yusuf's exhibition titled Indonesia and I stand alongside but slightly apart from his nation.

A founding member of the Indonesian artist-activist collective Taring Padi since 1998 when the group emerged during a period of domestic political turmoil, Yusuf creates works that embody Taring Padi's particular brand of visual aesthetics. Concerned about social justice and the rights of minority and marginal communities, Yusuf and other members of Taring Padi have consistently cultivated a social consciousness towards the grassroots in their work. Their distinct brand of protest art - seen in their block print (cukil) posters and banners, improvisational street theatre, music and art festivals, as well as workshops involving different communities - seeks as much to create awareness of the livelihood of particular social communities as they highlight, mock and criticise structures of inequality. Due to the ease of reproduction and distribution, block printing on paper and cloth has remained a mainstay technique in the posters and banners produced by Taring Padi. Indonesia and I showcases a suite of about 20 large-format block print banners where Yusuf has aggregated much of the visual aesthetics propagated by Taring Padi. Each banner is intricately composed, visually powerful, and carries extensive narrative depth: emphasising the rights of every child to education; the virtues of personal character development; equality for women; sufficiency on the agricultural produce of local communities; and visions of social democracy. In these works, Yusuf articulates a distinct and powerful voice of social advocacy in today's Indonesian contemporary art scene.

Following Indonesia and I at Valentine Willie Fine Art, Singapore from 5 to 9 August 2010 is Aku dan You, where Yusuf will present a distinctly different set of work at Tembi Contemporary, Yogyakarta, Indonesia from 24 August to 14 September 2010. Aku dan You comprises mainly paintings and shows Yusuf's extensive visual repertoire. A painting major at the Institut Seni Indonesia in Yogyakarta, this body of work evidences an inclination for illustration. American artist and illustrator Joe Coleman's burlesque of both high and low American life provides endless fascination and inspiration for Yusuf. In Aku dan You, Yusuf presents a selection of paintings of varying sizes, narrative potential and personal relevance, wry and biting in its social observation and critique, and sometimes grostesque.

Penyelewengan Sejarah (The Deviation of History) is a triptych of self-portraits making reference to a heroic Indonesian triumvirate. On the left panel, Yusuf assumes the guise of Diponegoro, spiritual leader of the anti-colonial rebellion sometimes termed as the Java War which took place between 1825 and 1830. He is portrayed in a heroic pose mounted atop a rearing horse, his assertively raised right arm brandishing a paintbrush that has left a sweeping trail of fuschia across a fiery crimson sky. Partitioned behind him on the left are various archetypes of the people, the common class (rakyat), including the labourer, the farmer and the woman protester. Yusuf's oeuvre consistently feature them as centrepieces critical for his narrative-driven works. The people square up to representations of colonial Dutch troops on the right, ready to shed blood. Battle and bloodshed is suggested by illustrations of skulls and bones. Good triumphs over evil, as represented by the Indonesian shadow puppet theatre (wayang) figure of Dursasana, commonly taken as a vile character, falling over on the bottom edge of the work.

Alongside self-portrait as Diponegoro is Yusuf reincarnated in the unmistakeable persona of Sukarno, the charismatic political leader who led Indonesia to national independence. Sukarno is easily identified by the statesman uniform he is wearing. In his hands, he holds a large stone, behind which peek out a claw, a visualisation of the Indonesian adage ada udang dibalik batu which equates more or less to the popular saying – more than meets the eye. In Sukarno's hands lie not only the destiny of a nation's people, but even culture and nature, signified by representations of animals and wayang figures, are accounted for. A banner reads 'Provokasih' at the bottom of the centre panel. Painted red, it echoes the band of red cutting across the sky, signalling bravery and valour. Completing the triumvirate is Yusuf replacing the persona of the student protestor in one of Indonesian modern artist S.Sudjojono's landmark paintings, Maka Lahirlah Angkatan '66. The student protester of Sudjojono's painting, wearing a red jacket that assimilates to the symbolic red band across the sky, is Yusuf cast as Taring Padi artist-social activist, holding a print roller and a paint can that pronounces 'Wood Cut Not Dead', hence proclaiming the persistence of protest art. The background showing a gathering of common people coloured in a uniform monotone shade and hoisting wood blocks is adapted from a Taring Padi poster. Their shadows cast a black background on which the text Bara merah satukan darah membakar batas dan kelas (Smouldering red embers with shed blood will destroy all class and limits) is etched.

Yusuf's treatment of history, while rooted in reality, is driven by a purposeful sense of pastiche, clobbering together an assortment of historical figures and episodes. Signalling his version of history as a deviation creates for himself the space to engage critically with history that tends to laud victors and forget the vanquished. His guises signal affiliations with protest, revolutions, uprisings and the triumph of people power, and stand as a distinct and powerful voice of social advocacy in today's Indonesian contemporary art scene.

The block print on cloth, Satu Bus (One Bus), overflows with faces of notable figures in history in the interior of a crowded bus. The pictorial space seems to lurch forward, bulging to accommodate the profusion of faces. Outlined in white and filled in with a uniform ebony black, Yusuf appears almost as a demi-god clutching a book with the title Self History. Yusuf's father, a used clothings dealer before he passed away, steers the bus plying Lumajang in East Java, where Yusuf was born, and Yogyakarta, where he now works and resides with his wife and children. Behind him is Yusuf's mother, who worked as a seamstress. On the bus are passengers such as Mexican modernist artist and muralist, Diego Riveria and Frida Kahlo, his wife and also an artist. Best known for deeply affective self-portraits, her works seem to have been a key pictorial influence on Yusuf's works, particularly in Aku dan You, in their compositional focus given to the figure, the intensity and vibrancy of colours and the thorough deployment of symbolic elements.

The Indonesian poet-activist, Widji Thukul, whose work was critical of the Indonesian government, and who is suspected to have been abducted by government forces in 1998, makes an appearance, as does Munir Said Thalib, a human rights and anti-corruption activist assassinated in 2004 on Garuda, the Indonesian national air carrier. They are joined by historic figures like Raden Ayu Kartini, the 19th century Javanese heroine advocating the emancipation of women, and Mohandas Gandhi, the inspirational political and spiritual leader of the Indian independence movement. Satu Bus is a singular homage to inspirational figures; like Penyelewengan Sejarah, it discloses voluminously his affiliations.

Reading off a visual narrative is the primary approach to Yusuf's works we may take. The density of pictorial elements in his compositions, especially in the Indonesia and I block prints, may seem overwhelming but a clear structure undergirds each work where narrative episodes are contained within numerous picture cells. Janji Sejahtera (Prosperity Promise) is a large-format block print where Yusuf echos the developmental vision proclaimed by Sukarno, Berdiri Atas Kaki Sendiri, abbreviated as Berkadiri and translated literally as 'standing on your own feet'. As ideal and manifesto, Berkadiri is etched on a banner in front of a luxuriant tree. To its left and right, Yusuf has incorporated scenes of abundance in nature and industry to illustrate the ultimate reality of the vision. These scenes, as Yusuf seems to suggest, may only come to fruition supported by a social fabric where the concepts of multi-religiosity and gotong royong (a moral concept in the Malay-speaking world which stands for mutual help, reciprocity and other aligned ideas) are at work. They certainly are in Janji Sejahtera. Men and women work, cook and live under one roof on the middle left of the composition while the unique features of four religions, each represented by their own distinct architecture, line up alongside each other on the middle right. Beneath is a typical scene in a posyandu (abbreviated from Pos Pelayanan Terpadu, or Integrated Service Post) which is a district clinic attending to the healthcare of women and children.

The nuclear family unit – father, mother and two children – is not only Yusuf's visualisation of his present family, but also idealised as the basic unit of a utopian society. It resides at the heart of the composition. Underneath it, Yusuf visualises the structure of village communities. Basic financial transactions proceed between villagers in a local district bank which is operational once a week in various villages in Yogyakarta and other parts of Indonesia. Beneath it is a scene of plentiful harvest. Flanking the scenes of village commerce and agriculture are representations of the common labourer and the farmer, each one enlarged in scale and thus given emphasis in Yusuf's composition. Janji Sejahtera is indeed very much a utopian vision, but critically, a utopia does not exist without a dichotomous other side – the regrettable side of reality. At the very bottom of the composition are panels illustrating foolishness, poverty and division. Yusuf's utopia is in the process of realisation – never complete and always a vision to strive towards.

In this process where perseverance is necessary, Yusuf's creativity is stoked. Beneath his sanguine artistic persona, there is a persistence of vision precisely because everyday reality in his world falls short of the ideal. The relevance of Yusuf’s work remains unabated today as he insists in seeing art as a powerful form of social response and a medium of change. He bears a voice of consciousness; one too rare amongst contemporaries. Indonesia and I and Aku Dan You marks a distinct point of reckoning in his oeuvre where his thoughts on social democracy and justice, the environment and other relevant social issues have been allowed to consolidate and then translated into the visual narratives seen in both shows.

Wang Zineng is an auction house specialist of modern and contemporary Southeast Asian art and writes occasionally on related subjects.

- - - - - - - - - -

Connecting with the people: The art of Muhamad “UCUP” Yusuf

For many of us, art resonates best on an emotional and spiritual level. Add to that a strong appeal to the intellect and an aesthetic that reflects true talent and originality and you have the makings of a very strong bond between artist and viewer. I felt that the first time I saw one of Muhamad Yusuf’s paintings and right away wanted to find out more about Ucup, as he is known, and the Taring Padi collective he helped found in 1999. In short, I felt a connection.

As we celebrate Ucup’s first solo exhibition overseas and his first at Tembi Contemporary, it might help to take a step back and briefly examine the movement from which he cannot be separated. Taring Padi (which loosely translates as the Sharp Tip of the Rice Grain) may number fewer than ten members but their art has had an impact on tens of thousands of farmers, students and activists. From an anti-pesticide campaign in Boyolali in 1999 to helping refugees in Aceh after that, the Yogyakarta-based group has dedicated more than a decade of its energy to a range of causes in Indonesia.

Carrying on this tradition of building networks between different communities, in June (2010) they held a workshop with villagers displaced by the eruption of a mud volcano in Porong, east Java, where, more than four years later, thousands are still waiting to be compensated for lost homes and livelihoods. “Taring Padi has been instrumental in raising public awareness,” Heidi Arbuckle, a program officer at the Ford Foundation and an old friend of the group, writes in Taring Padi and the Politics of Radical Cultural Practice in Contemporary Indonesia. “The collaborative efforts of non-government organizations, Taring Padi and the rakyat themselves have challenged the complacency of local bureaucrats, resulting in a number of small victories for their cause.”

Since being established after the fall of former President Suharto in 1998, the collective - who, like Ucup, are mostly graduates from the Indonesian Art Institute (ISI) - has produced thousands of banners and posters, mostly without the aid of any modern equipment. Works are etched into wood, covered with ink and then reproduced by stamping on long sheets of white cloth or paper. Historically, most of the works were then burned in demonstrations or lost in natural disasters like the earthquake that rocked Yogya in 2006. “We’re not too concerned about what happens to our works,” explains Ucup in a past interview. “Our mission is to give training to others and raise awareness.”

Most of that training happens at their modest atelier in the tiny central Java village of Sembungan, where, fortunately, overhead costs can be kept pretty low. Still, it is a lot more than what they were paying for a space when they started out by taking over an abandoned building on the former campus of their art school. As squatters, the group lived as a commune, where they painted, cooked and gardened together. That bohemian lifestyle didn’t agree with everyone, however, and in 2003 the group was attacked by members of a hardline Muslim group that accused them of being communists and leftist radicals.

Left-leaning might be the more apropos term. The Taring Padi’s concept of seni kerakyatan borrows from the left-wing cultural movement of the 1950s and 60s known as the Institute of People’s Culture (or LEKRA), which was was disbanded in the turmoil that gave rise to the autocratic Suharto regime in 1965. Like the pre-1965 left, adds Arbuckle, “seni kerakyatan is not defined by aesthetic criteria but the quest for popular consciousness and the ideological commitment to people’s struggles.”

The criteria, per se, may vary but they are certainly rooted in powerful visual traditions established in the 20th century. Nowhere are these traditions more strongly felt than in the works of Ucup, whose identification with protest art and worker struggles of the past and present are expressed unequivocally in his woodcuts and works on canvas. Like the great Mexican muralists David Siquieros, Jose Clemente Orozco and, of course, Diego Rivera, Ucup tackles the themes of injustice that surround him, from class disparity and greed to unbridled consumerism and environmental degradation. “We are critical,” stresses Ucup. “But we are not anti-government.”

The criticism that pervades Ucup’s work is most explicit in his woodcuts and often tangible in his canvases, whose themes combine a wit and lyricism that can be playful and cynical at the same time. Doses of humor may help the medicine go down but make no mistake, this is the de facto leader of a group that was born out of the country’s bloody, pro-democracy movement in 1998 and maintains its ideological commitment to struggle. Like Sudjojono nearly a century ago, Ucup and his collaborators lament the state of the agrarian movement and the plight of today’s farmer. “They have always fought to get farmers better prices,” adds Arbuckle.

Rice farmers, once the backbone of the country, struggle today not only in the face of new techniques and technologies but also from a change in consumption habits. This is brilliantly illustrated in his painting Makanan Nasional, a series of ten packs of instant noodles, a food introduced only a few decades ago by Suharto’s cronies and now a multibillion dollar industry. Ucup seems to take aim at Indofood, now the largest producer of instant noodles in the world, and each pack pokes fun at the non-discriminating masses whose every slurp feeds a destructive cycle of emptying wallets with even emptier nutrition. Big business triumphs again, helping turn instant noodles into a national food and one that can be found in any corner of the archipelago along with kretek, that other ubiquitous commodity that has enslaved the masses.

Yet a positive message recalling the nationalist rhetoric of Sukarno, the country’s firebrand first president, also characterizes the works in this latest exhibition. A particularly strong example is the Trisakti series of woodcuts. Named after the university in Jakarta where four students were killed during the riots of May, 1998, the three works remind Indonesians not to forget their rights and to foster a culture of self-sufficiency, both in terms of food security and politics.

In other etchings, like Penumpang Gelap, undertones of violence recall the works of Kathe Kollwitz and Otto Dix, who appear to have had a profound impact on Ucup’s style and Taring Padi’s preferred medium. Interestingly, whereas the blunt criticism expressed by the German Expressionists in the early 20th century led many of their works to be condemned as “degenerate art,” those same painters are now ranked among the most influential in the history of Western art. It may be too early to measure the long-term impact of Taring Padi but when that history is written, their sphere of influence will likely expand beyond the realm of fine art.

Still, the longer one studies these provocative works, a natural question arises as to whether the same idealism that has held Ucup and Taring Padi together for more than a decade can be sustained. Is it likely that the power of protest may soon be lost to the allure of commercial success? Ucup doesn’t think so. The group may have abandoned its structure of having officers and cobbled together enough money to buy a simple printing press but it is staying on message. “When we get money we use it for our collective purposes like teaching,” he explains. “We work with farmers and laborers who may not have realized they too have an aesthetic sensibility.”

At this point in his most-promising career, Ucup will have to reconcile for himself whether it is art for the people or art for the market. While the two do not have to be mutually exclusive, or even contradictory, the potential conflict will certainly test his resolve. As he struggles with the dilemma (though I am not at all certain that he does), Ucup will no doubt handle it with the same humor and insight that enlivens the current works marking his debut on the international stage. In the end, his success will not be measured by the market but by the depth of that connection.

Jason Tedjasukmana
Indonesia Correspondent
TIME Magazine