STAGING NARRATIVES OF CHANGING IDENTITY The last half of the decade has transformed the studios of contemporary artists in Indonesia into busy and dynamic spaces where established artists and their assistants work while guests, curators, collectors, and gallery owners flow in and out without pause. The idea that Indonesian art has a place in the global art world feels real today. The distance between remote studios and the world’s showrooms is rapidly narrowing. The globalization of art is of course not a new phenomenon; in the last twenty years, the art world has redefined the so-called global village illustrating the concept of six degrees of separation by revealing how elements of art from various parts of the world are more easily connected and by overcoming the boundaries that once existed. Entang Wiharso chose a location for his Indonesian studio that is slightly away from the city center of Yogyakarta, creating a unique and tangible dynamic that eschews the usual industrial or minimalistic impressions that are now the trend in most other studios. Above the door we can see a sign that reads “Black Goat Studios”, a reference to an identity and concept that emerged in Entang’s work over the last decade, as well as the team that now works with Entang in his studio. The sound of grinders and saws, the constant hammering from all corners and the construction of large wooden crates indicate that Entang’s installation works are continuously being made for various exhibitions, preparing new stories to be shared with the world. Seminal Developments: The Reciprocal Relationship between Idea and Form in Entang’s Work Although his current large-scale aluminum installations often feature colossal images, his formative series of aluminum cut-out works developed through a process of experimentation with printmaking. In preparation for a 2008 exhibition in Jakarta, Entang worked with a printing technique that was different from those commonly used in Indonesian contemporary art. He experimented with embossing using aluminum plates as the negative for the work. Ultimately he saw that these plates were an ideal artistic material and became increasingly interested in the plates as stand-alone art objects. Although his journey of discovering and developing a new way of expressing ideas through his aluminum installations may seem like sheer happenstance, Entang can trace its development from an ideological perspective in his earlier work. Entang notes that in the 1980s, back when he was starting his artistic career, his creation of visual codes was affected by the surrealistic tendencies favored by artists in Yogyakarta (or Jogja as it is locally known). Although it did not develop into a real movement, the spirited advocacy for surrealism raised a particular passion for young artists seeking an alternative to the politically-explicit work of the time in favor of greater use of symbolism. Jogja’s surrealism at that time featured extreme visual symbols, including deformed and reimagined organs or landscapes that showed the dark side of humanity. Entang’s early work from the late 1980s revolved around similar themes although he covered different and varied topics compared to other artists of the period, such as politics, violence and the tension between traditional and modern identity. Entang’s experimentation with aluminum broke down that barrier and he confirmed his belief, first expressed in his exhibition at the Indonesian National Gallery entitled “Idea is Form” in 1995, that the choice of material in his work was inextricably linked to the context contained within the material itself; content and form were symbiotic. Aluminum is an important symbol of modernity in a developing society like Indonesia, where traditionally handcrafted items are now being mass produced by machinery. Aluminum’s malleability, which allows it to be shaped into any form and lends itself to large scale production, qualifies it as a new symbol of modernity in Indonesian daily life. Aluminum is a part of an emerging lifestyle that is fast paced and industrialist and yet contains suggestions of sustainability due to its durability and non-disposable nature. Entang sees the strategic value of this material within his creative process. By using a material closer to daily life in his work, Entang builds a bridge to communicate his ideas to a broader public. While using a visual vocabulary he had developed over the years in conjunction with the new “cut-out” approach, he revealed the accessible nature of aluminum in popular shapes familiar to a broader audience. This remarkable treasury of images, many with deep connections to shadow puppetry which informs and is informed by Indonesian history and society, is a strategic tool to communicate with the public. In a world where there is no longer a separation between the fine arts and the common household object, Entang introduces new forms of narrative that combined them both, underlining the fact that the materials he chooses are familiar and commonly recognized by all. Thus Entang began processing aluminum and stainless steel with the aim to shift his creative model in a radical way. His exhibition in Jakarta at Ark Galerie in mid-2008 was his first presentation of this experimentation with aluminum, together with the manual print works that inspired his cut-out ideas. Focusing on his personal narrative of the split identity symbolized by the black goat, Entang made a large-scale narrative out of the aluminum plates. Located in a medium-sized space on the lower level of the gallery, this installation piece successfully absorbed the audience’s attention and brought them to a point where the symbolism was easily understood. It was visually stunning with a minimalistic impression, featuring sharp color contrasts between the jet black walls and the shimmery silver of glossy aluminum. The absence of a background landscape made the figures and the visual objects represented by Entang more visible and thus readable, focusing the audience on the symbols. In my opinion, Entang’s artistic practice reflects the ways in which Indonesian artists have always desired to connect with traditions. In the 1970s, the idea of returning to tradition to establish the “Indonesian” identity was widely disseminated amidst the influx of pop culture that was influencing the new generation in almost all parts of the world. Indonesian artists of the period, such as WS Rendra or Sardono W. Kusumo, saw how using tradition as part of an aesthetic vocabulary was an important contribution to the early growth of contemporary art in the country. Rendra explored forms of folk theater while Kusumo explored the countryside to investigate new forms of dance, eventually bringing tradition-laden art to global society. Today, the perspective towards tradition has begun to shift. The contemporary artist is still exploring traditions, but no longer to confirm an identity as the ‘other’ in global contemporary art. Moreover, I observe that today’s contemporary artist perceives tradition as an integral and unconscious part of identity, coupled with the belief that there is truly no originality in art creation anymore. There is no longer a distinction between the traditional and the modern from the point of view of contemporary art today. This shift is interesting because it allows artists to be critical toward their own traditions and that of other cultures. Rather than merely exploring tradition, Entang is one of the few artists who seeks to align various cultures and backgrounds, the traditional and the modern, and approach them proportionally and not just through romanticism, which was the common trend in the 1980s. The words of Jim Supangkat, who said that Entang is truly not a traditionalist but instead is a part of a generation that does not need to question its ethnic identity, remain valid. Collage and Comic: The New Search of Entang Wiharso Entang himself was born of a generation which, I think, has a different cultural reaction towards products of pop culture, including comics, than today’s artists in their 20s and 30s. Post 2000, comics became one of the more popular visual devices used by young artists in Indonesia and was frequently transferred onto canvas, drawings or animation. This was arguably the long-term effect of the joint activism of the Yogyakarta-based artist collective Apotik Komik in the 1990s who promoted non-mainstream images as part of the contemporary art vocabulary. This trend stemmed from the desire to combine fine art and pop art that was also influenced by an affinity to the pop art works of Warhol, Lichtenstein or Jasper Johns. Further, the generation succeeding Apotik Komik was heavily influenced by Japanese comics and popular US illustration magazines such as Juxtapose. However, like Entang, the generation of artists born in the 1960s (see also the visual vocabulary of Heri Dono or Agung Kurniawan) tapped into comics in a different way. They perceived comics as part of the introduction of modern products into Indonesia at the beginning of the New Order, the term used to describe the rule of Indonesian President Suharto (1965-1998). Comics existed in daily life alongside popular music found on the radio and cassettes, with television still a luxury item for a particular social class. Comics in Indonesia explored the stories of Mahabharata and Ramayana, or created characters such as Tatang, based on traditional and everyday life. Through television Entang also savored comics from the West in series such as The Adventures of Tintin and through cartoon superheroes like Captain America, Phantom, Superman, Batman, Spiderman, etc. This generation also consumed comics like Lucky Luke or martial arts stories by Kho Ping Ho. I think that in contrast to the 1980s generation, Entang’s generation did not experience comics and popular culture as given, but as a long-term process that included the ‘competition’ of various new cultural products entering and seeking a foothold in a young society, such that the transition born of incorporating this influx of new cultural products became a part of everyday life. Dr. Mary-Louise Totton, in her essay for the catalog for Entang’s 2011 show Peeling Back the Layers, describes how he builds a complex narrative in his comic-based work where the audience is not directed by a linear story line. Entang instead combines, in one narration, the male-female relationships, ambition and passion, art and power, identity and the lines of ancestry. Though I have described the experience that led Entang to develop the initial idea of the cut-out (a term coined by Entang a little further down the road once he was more distanced and thus able to map his creative journey), in fact the roots of the idea began in 2003 when he began creating and using metal saws in his work. In the beginning these jagged-blade saws were used to represent issues of disturbing violence, focused mainly on exploring the events leading up to and after the 1998 political crisis and Suharto’s downfall. Entang began to feel that it was no longer enough to use canvas as a medium to express his thoughts and at that point, I think, the complexity of the issues he was dealing with furthered his passion to try new things. The installation “I Love You Too Much” (2004) represents a marker in Entang’s two-decade long creative journey as an artist. In this work, he fashioned saws in odd sizes, cut straight from steel plate, to highlight an environment of tension and acute fears. These massive steel saws, along with dozens of forms resembling babies and red balloons, formed a gripping installation. The babies were littered on the ground like scattered corpses, some were flying in the air, manifested as little angels without wings, and some even swung between flying saw blades. From these itinerant saws, we can see the roots of his aluminum installation work. Not only does this pivotal work reveal his strength in describing the issues of violence, but more profoundly it illustrates the chaos and paradoxes of a society dealing with democracy in its infancy. Entang possesses an awareness of how each material has political content relating to its effectiveness in conveying specific ideas. For example, the use of steel for the hand-cut saws, with rust and stains coating the surface, are a manifestation of the desire to create symbolic artifacts of a time that has passed; one that left a ‘black stain’ resulting from the clashes and bloodshed. When reflecting of his aesthetic development and use of materials, Entang stated: “These [the choice of materials] were all direct causes of ideas, issues and themes I explored through my works. I choose my materials carefully to support the thesis of my work and to put forward and encourage the messages I wish to convey.” Interview with Entang Wiharso (unrecorded), October 2012 at Parsley Cafe, Yogyakarta At this time, Entang also began to incorporate elements into his paintings that resembled collage. One of his early works incorporating collage is “Me as Teddy Bear” (2004) which was exhibited at KIASMA Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, Finland. In this large-scale painting, Entang attached elements like saws to the surface of paintings and deliberately made them part of the main narrative. Looking at this strategy, Entang seems to combine and deconstruct, but at the same time, emphasize. Although there is a solid awareness of technique and material in Entang’s creative process, in his collage works we can also see his great, spontaneous energy. Collage works reflect his unwillingness to be a part of convention and his desire to interlink with other histories. Gregory Ulmer refers to collage as an intervention with the world – designed to change reality, not reflect it. The art of the collage encourages the artist to let ideas grow and respond to each other while at the same time achieving harmony. […] a discussion of collage very sufficiently explained how the works being created these days are part of the culture rather than as a comment to the culture itself. Works that use images, forms and ideas that have been created before allow the new work to be open to various interpretations and associations from its audience, acting as an active experience rather than an idea or a static form. Ulmer, Gregory: The Object of Post Criticism" in The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture edited by Hal Foster (1983) Subsequent to creating these works, Entang became increasingly interested in experimenting with new materials and creating new works to support his theses and widespread ideas. His studio evolved into a laboratory; he was searching for a new vocabulary and visual codes that were wild and mischievous to describe this new creative phase that was enveloping him. Not only was he experimenting with new materials, Entang also challenged himself and his team to create new tools that would allow his visual ideas to be realized. Cross-Cultural, Cross-Discipline: Installation and Performance Art At the same time that he was developing new ways of working, the trips he took around the world, breaking through geo-political borders with their complex discourse of globalization, led Entang to formulate the concept of his new works. Displacement and the crossing of cultures made him a ‘hybrid human’ and that resulted in a larger narrative which he represented in the form of ‘black goat’. This ‘black goat’ was a symbol drawn from the identity complex he frequently experienced when crossing geo-political borders. Prior to Entang’s further exploration of new materials, he embarked on another project, which he called Puppet Blues, concerning the recurring question of identity, this time drawing on traditional cross-cultural heritage originating with shadow puppetry. For this project he created oversized, ornamented and jointed figures from cardstock and sheet aluminum which he cut and painted. These works hung from the ceiling and were lit to cast shadows on the walls. He explained: At that time, I saw how my own identity changed depending on where I was, and through people’s (wrong) assumption of my background and beliefs. I wanted to express this condition/reality in a work that allows for layered narratives, to reposition reality and also a work that incorporates the environment as a ‘staging device’ to create context. Interview with Entang Wiharso (unrecorded), October 2012. In addition to marking his interest in the cut-out form that would later manifest into his aluminum cut-out installations, his shadow puppetry project also confirmed an approach which I think is relevant to understanding Entang’s recent works: the starting point of his interest in incorporating performance into his art. Although he initially mentioned that Puppet Blues was a project created to represent the divided identity he experienced from living partly in Indonesia, with all its connection to its culture, in contrast to the reality of living in contemporary society in the US, in fact references to tradition were very strongly displayed in this work. It is interesting how the desire to create a more experimental installation actually stemmed from tradition. In this work we see references found in the other art disciplines, particularly the performance arts. Indeed, the categorization of art into fine art, performance art, music and so on are part of modern knowledge which tends to strongly limit a wide range of various phenomena; in the past, all forms of art were celebrated together as a phenomenon of life, existing across forms of visual arts, stage, literature and music. Interdisciplinary art is something that is almost a certainty in the realm of contemporary art today, like going back to the pre-modernist situation with its high spontaneity. Exhibitions of contemporary art today involve people from other disciplines: film directors, choreographers, musicians, actors, dancers, architects and technology experts. Interdisciplinary work is not only meaningful due to its emphasis on the ‘process’ instead of the ‘product’; in fact process enhances the desire to see something from a different perspective, to take, borrow, adapt and even recreate forms born of history and within a context different from the ones cultivated before. Beyond Entang’s prominent use of cut-out in his work, I also notice how his work was increasingly transformed into a stage - a space between theater and dance, perhaps. Whereas the series of aluminum and canvas cut-outs in Puppet Blues make powerful reference to shadow puppetry, the work Chronicle Fence (2010, steel, aluminum plate, volcanic stone powder and cement, 1.5 m x 4 m), exhibited at ArtJOG 2011 had a three-dimensional, stage quality that expanded to include actors, properties and a set, just like a real performance. When traced back, the stage-like quality of this series of cut-out works has its point of origin in 2003 when Entang created an installation entitled “Polluted by Norms,” one of three works included for an exhibition at KIASMA Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, Finland. Exhibited in “Wind from the East”, this piece features a large table with eating utensils populated by a grouping of three-dimensional animal-like figurines, above which is hung an upside-down table with embedded saws. This image was a radical theatrical portrayal, one that was real but at the same time filled with fantasy and imagination beyond the content that contained harsh critiques and a sharp questioning of established norms. In addition, Entang also often creates works of art within a performance framework. Most of his performances, besides featuring himself, also invite the participation of the audience as ‘actors.’ One of his most phenomenal is “Lost and Found,” a performance conducted in 2010 where the people involved were important to the art world of Indonesia, top collectors, gallerists and opinion-makers. This performance, which takes the form of a banquet, was an interactive performance using a standard plot with particular references to certain concepts; those not usually found in other performance arts in Indonesia. As an artist, does Entang consider himself a choreographer or a director? How did Entang transform the narrative element in this work so that a still object has equal power with the stage that relies on dynamic movement? I think Entang placed himself as a witness of his featured realities. Once in a while he composes events, but these are still linked to experiences we face daily. I think, using this position, he tries to get the audience to actively participate following his narrative; they can manipulate and choose their own plotline, and see the kinds of realities that are rejected by the ‘masses’, and build their own narratives. In “Lost and Found” he gave the conclusion to those who both watched and participated, and thus he built an indirect dialogue with the audience. Entang relied on both chaotic and festive elements while at the same time placing elements that represented riots and sentences filled with humor and sarcasm to propel the audience’s imagination forward. Epilogue From the research I’ve done on Entang’s work created in the last decade, I find myself brimming with interesting questions about the history of contemporary art in Indonesia. What does tradition mean for today’s generation, my generation, for instance? How does today’s artist subtly provoke his audience, when that seems to be the only way for art to have meaning? Will today’s artist endeavor to move out of his comfort zone, experience something new and risky, not just for himself but also to criticize the regime of power that continues to change? Entang shows that changes in artistic strategy and aesthetic vision are born not merely out of the upheaval within the artist but also are a result of his interaction with the world around him that is often filled with tension. At this point, I think, it is important to mention how a creator/artist is basically a political agent of culture that is both active and qualified. Entang’s artistic practices demonstrate his ability to read and map the art situation and put Indonesian art into the global art practice. He also reveals how the art of Indonesia has a role in the governance of life encompassing social, political, economic and cultural contexts. A cultural agent does not only promote cultural products as they are commonly understood, but moreover continuously challenges himself to criticize his own work practices and open a network of ideas with other cultural actors in order to advocate for universal situations in a world full of unfairness and political inequality. With regards to his own personal growth as an artist, Entang shows how the artist himself metamorphosed in response to various contexts and situations. Now in the second half of his artistic career, when he is already part of a group of established artists in Indonesia, Entang Wiharso has displayed a rejection of static situations in the creative process. Today, the ideas of change, speed and a world perpetually in motion is one of the mainstream discourses in contemporary art. By taking in the ‘big picture’ of the world today, Entang has reflected on his personal experience on the global stage and identified the demand for change and the necessity of adjusting to what has been referred to as “the present and the now.” This demand for change has developed a desire in him to question the relevance of his own artistic practices, be it his aesthetic vision or artistic ideology. During the last few years, Entang Wiharso made a great leap beyond the stereotypes, surpassing the establishment, and beyond what has almost become a routine. The process of art is truly a continuous effort of great leaps forward, and this pushes the artist to always remain on the cutting edge of idea and expression.