The Fourth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

HERi DONO Ceremony of the soul 1995 Stone, fibreglass, plastic, radio and tape player, lamps, fans, wood Nine figures: 70 x 60 x 50cm each Collection: The artist Courtesy: Cemeti Art House, Yogyakarta The imagery of automata has persisted through modern animated cartoons, which Heri Dono has loved since youth . Heri wrote of Flying angels (Bidadari) 1996 that it was ... inspired by the Flash Gordon stories, created long before Neil Armstrong flew to the moon in the Apollo 11 spacecraft. For me, the Bidadari is an extremely personal symbol of freedom of conscience, replacing the Garuda symbol that has been used as a symbol of collective ideology and propaganda to prevent individuals from developing their intellect and personality freely. 6 If Heri Dono is a modern dalang, a wayang puppet-master, the key question is whether puppets, human-like, are able to break free of their master or whether, puppet-like, humanity is ultimately doomed, unable to challenge tyrants. This issue was undoubtedly the key theme in the resistance of Indonesian intellectuals to 'New Order' society and culture, and Heri Dono one of the artists who most successfully articulated it. This socially located resistance in Heri Dona's work has a crucial spiritual dimension. Ideas of soul and spirit are the foundation of Javanese (and other Indonesian) indigenous animist beliefs, which attribute in-dwelling spirits to all things, whether animate or apparently inanimate. Awareness of spirits in the world is crucial to Indonesian contemporary art and Heri Dono has recently reaffirmed his affiliation with Javanese animism. 7 As Indonesian art historian and curator Jim Supangkat notes, Heri Dono not only works in an artistic community where the spiritual basis of art is widely recognised, but Heri also confirms that his work is rooted in spirituality: 'I tend to counter rational conclusions in my mind that observes things through materiality. In this process I rely on spirituality and aesthetical experiences that very often provide me w ith surprising ideas which show some kind of paradox.' 8 Of course, Heri Dono has made many works that depart from his pattern of reiterated figures. Two recent works are allegories, which feature huge central figures and deal quite directly with recent events. Raksasa 2001 was based on a tale from the Mahabharata, and referred obliquely to circuits of influence and resistance in Indonesian and world politics. The second work, Trojan Horse 2002, used the Greek story of the Trojan Horse to represent the American post-September 11 invasion of Afghanistan, with a multitude of tiny figures parachuting from the 'horse' in the sky. 9 In the past Heri Dono did not represent figures of power and authority so straightforwardly. This new frankness is evidence that the social and artistic repressions of 'New Order' Indonesia are relaxing, and that artists are, as many commentators have noted, now free to express themselves more openly. Heri Dono is reconfiguring the theme of misused power in this new political environment. If the central dominating figures of Raksasa represent power, the small figure at their feet attests to the ingenuity of resistance: in the original myth Bima was induced to climb inside the ear of the tiny Dewa Ruci, in a successful inversion of normal power relations. Less optimistically, the cloud of tiny parachutists descending from the Trojan Horse of American air-power surely represents the 'small man' of the American armed forces as misguided - a 'puppet' in the invasion. Thus Heri Dono continues to mobilise the rich cultural resources of Indonesian modernity: as power takes new forms the artist, and the people, continue to invent new ways to evade it. Julie Ewington is Head of Australian Art at the Queensland Art Gallery. 49