The Fourth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

HERi DONO - THE MULTIPLE MATTERS OF MODERN LIFE The lively, parodic and hybrid universe of Heri Dono is always crowded - packed to bursting point. His sculptures and installations, even more than his paintings, are tightly crammed in serried ranks, with the same figure repeated many times over. The constant reiteration of figures in Heri's works is striking: these multiple representatives of humanity, identical in all respects, are not specifically either masculine or feminine, though they are modelled on the artist's own head. With this image Heri Dono presents the Indonesian everyman, the orang kecil or 'little man'. The orang kecil is a figure of great rhetorical power in contemporary Indonesian society, and the vehicle of Indonesians' empathy for their fellows. Importantly, identification with the orang kecil is a privileging of group identity over individual ego that is integral to Javanese conceptions of person and society. In this world view, the individual orang keci! sits within the greater whole of the masarakyat, literally the mass of the people, a modern term that translates vernacular Indonesian collectivity into quasi– socialist terms. In 2000, Heri Dono explicitly affirmed his deep affinity with the orang kecil: I have worked with many other individuals in the creative process, most of whom were 'ordinary people'. The installation art and the performances that I have created, including my version of the wayang, have all involved the input of a wide variety of individuals, from friends involved in electronics, mechanics, construction, crafts and various arts, and others, including becak drivers and grave diggers. Significantly, the becak (tricycle) driver is the quintessential orang kecil, and many becak drivers live in the Kleben area of Yogyakarta, with which Heri Dono has had a longstanding relationship. 1 The three major works selected for APT 2002 are structured through these ranks, grids and reiterations, embodying the sense in which the Javanese individual is firmly embedded in the matrix of a social whole. It is also important to note that the grid, a significant aspect of European modernist art in Heri Dono's youth, has clearly offered an aesthetic principle useful to the artist and legible for international audiences. However this does not adequately account for the prevalence of the form in Heri Dono's art. The mandala of Javanese culture provides a more apposite and compelling principle, replete with mystical significance. Recently Heri referred to the significance that he attributes to this form, speaking about the mandalas of Borobodur, the great eighth-century Buddhist monument outside Yogyakarta, and to the layout of the city itself, which 'places the kraton (the Sultan's palace) both physically and spiritually at the centre of the consciousness of the community.' 2 The mandala is thus a map of a different world, where the works of Heri Dono originated and where they may still be found. 46 APT2002 .,,,..._ .:.._<(Ii ~ f ' f)> t. L.t" ~ ,t;,...' r ~ r." cl .Jno ,, .. ,,.., Top: The artist's preliminary sketch for Glass vehicles 1995 Below: Glass vehicles (detail) 1995 Glass, fibreglass, cloth, lamps, cable, iron, toy carriages 15 units: 125 x 40 x 40cm each Collection: The artist Courtesy: Cemeti Art House, Yogyakarta Heri Dono Indonesia b.1960 Glass vehicles (detail) 1995