The First Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

For those: Who are poor Who are suffer(ing) Who are oppressed Who are voiceless Who are powerless Who are burdened Who are victims of violence Who are victims of adupe Who are victims of injustice September 1993 Installation with associated solo performance Suspended bamboo and palm leaf rib structures, organic materials, dry ice Dadang Christantowas born in 1957 inTegal, Java, Indonesia. After graduating in 1978 from the Indonesian Art College, Yogyakarta, he began to work as an artist, joining several groups and studios. In 1979 he became part of an artists' community in Yogyakarta founded by the well-known Indonesian poet, W. S. Rendra. This led to involvement in many art activities organised within the community -craft, music, writing and performing arts. It also exposed him to social and political issues. In 1980 he continued his studies at the Indonesian Institute of the Arts, Yogyakarta, specialising in painting. He was known as a radical student and was involved in many social movements including that of the Mangun Wijaya non-governmental organis- ation to help the poor. Graduating in 1986, he worked as an illustrator at Yogyakarta Television Studio, and in 1987 joined the Indonesian New Art Movement project devel- oping a large collaborative work, 'Fantasy World in Supermarket', Which was exhibited at the Ismail Marzuki Cultural Center, Jakarta in the same year. This brought Dadang Christanto to the attention of critics and marked the beginning of his career as an installation artist. Since that time, most of his works have been installations expressing social issues. In 1991 he visited Australia and had solo exhibitions at the University of South Aus- tralia, Adelaide and the Victorian College of INDONESIA DADANG CHRISTANTO the Arts, Melbourne. He has participated in a number of group exhibitions including 'Jakarta Biennale for Young Artists', Jakarta, 1979 and 1985, and organised 'Experimental Art Festival' in Yogyakarta in 1992, which was held at a variety of indoor and open- air venues and involved about a hundred young artists. Also in 1992, his work was represented in 'Jakarta Art & Design Expo 1992' and two exhibitions in Fukuoka, Japan: 'New Art from South-East Asia', Fukuoka Art Museum, and 'Mobile Art Festival'. Though he is based in Yogyakarta, he travels frequently within Indonesia, and is involved in many com- munity art activities including some in his home town of Tegal. Dadang Christanto's work spans social concerns and his commitment to a non- violent society. In his view, violence is not only a physical process but occurs wherever power or pressure results in poverty, injustice and dependence. In his opinion also, devel- opment in Indonesia has usually favoured the elite rather than ordinary people. Trying to transform these concerns into principles of creativity, he said : I try to infuse my works with primitive touch. It is meant as a symbol of my empathy: an epigraph for the victims of oppression ... and those who have been waylaid by the process of hjstory and development. With my work I hope to encourage a more comprehensive view- 12 with a humanistic dimension-towards this age of development. His political and social concerns are evoked by two of his best known works, Golf ball and Bureaucracy, both created in 1991. Golf ball depicts the confrontation between farmers and landlords over the forced sale of farmlands for the purpose of creating golf courses. The work is a large-scale installation, consisting of two paintings and a series of cut- outs. The cut-outs depict a man hitting a golf ball which then turns into a wayang demon, a symbol of evil. The first painting shows the landing of the demon on the farmland. In the second, the land has become a desert. Bureaucracy is a constructed wood panel, resembling a sculpture. This work adapted a wayang standard. By arranging a row of two-dimensional heads akin to Javanese wayang puppets beside a half-human, half-animal creature, Dadang Christanto expresses his sense of the obedient and fawning behaviour engendered within bureaucratic organisations. Jim Supangkat Bureaucracy 1991 Synthetic polymer paint on canvas on plywood 140x535cm