The Seventh Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

Unapologetically critical, Uji Handoko Eko Saputro (aka Hahan) rails pugnaciously against the structures of the Indonesian contemporary art world. Deploying the languages of street art and punk music rather than the rhetoric of the high-end art industry, he speaks for a powerful young generation of Indonesian artists, swept along by the recently booming art market. Hahan’s bold and audacious imagery caricatures art world figures — collectors, curators, critics — and, looking introspectively, the hopes, dreams and realities of artists themselves. The leading force in the South-East Asian art market, Indonesian contemporary art has had a volatile history. With a significant lack of public institutions, Indonesia’s contemporary art infrastructure has largely been supported by a network of wealthy private collectors. While this has financially benefited emerging artists, it has been argued that the absence of regulated and sustainable avenues for collecting, display and scholarship has created a sporadic and inconsistent system. 1 In early 2007, prices for Indonesian contemporary art broke sales records for South-East Asian art, and, by the end of the year, the market had tripled in value. Young artists were in high demand from auction houses in Singapore and Hong Kong, drawing significant prices only months after entering the market, while, at the same time, ‘star’ performers were rarely seen in public institutions or published in any art historical context. 2 The implications of private enterprise funding the market have given art in the region a collaborative, urban character, encouraging groups of artists to support and represent themselves. Many emerged in the wake of the fall of the Suharto regime in the late 1990s, from what was previously an underground industry. They were faced with a new social environment determined by market demands, rather than military forces, but this new art production was not necessarily accompanied by the development of critical discourse. 3 Reactionary styles, particularly evident in collaborations and street art from the artistic centres of Yogyakarta and Bandung, developed with thriving, localised energy. Hahan’s paintings are imbued with the tone of urban subcultures and the artistic underground while exposing elitist trends. Letters to the Great Saatchi 2011 takes as its point of departure a seminal exhibition and publication on Indonesian art, produced in collaboration with the London-based Saatchi Gallery, which had major consequences for the profile of certain artists. 4 The painting illustrates a toppling pile of intoxicated young artists, climbing over each other as they strive to achieve recognition. Similarly, Big Artist is a Big Factory 2012 depicts a myriad of curious, comical characters representing the working lives and relationships of artists as an array of difficult networks that must be juggled in the professional realm. The apocalyptic panorama The Journey 2011 is awash with fantastical imagery: depicting ‘a story of stereotypes of an artist in Indonesia’, the composition features artists floating or sinking in a sea — revolutionaries, gallery artists, innovators and a single artist with a head comprised of hands (symbolising hard work), beckoned by a dewa (god) to take the treacherous journey to a portal where dreams come true. The synthetic cartoon-style of Hahan’s paintings continues in the ‘Trinity’ series of sculptures. Three lurid heads extend his critiques of art personalities, with wild and exaggerated features emphasising their contentious roles. The New Prophet 2011 satirises a two-faced curator, on one side biting into a version of the book Art Now , the other side with bundles of money dangling from his mouth. 5 The sculpture describes the commodification of curators in Indonesia, where curators often play business as well as discursive roles. The other sculptures in the series are The Devout 2012, which portrays the artist weary and dazed due to the constant struggle to be part of every event and exhibition, and The Almighty 2012, depicting the collector with glittering gold teeth as the most powerful player in the industry. As the vocalist for the group Punkasila (literally ‘punk principles’, a pun on the word ‘pancasila’, or five principles, the founding tenets of the Indonesian state), Hahan is able to extend the anti-Establishment sentiments of his art into a different, performative domain, carrying some of the attitude of his paintings and sculptures beyond art world critiques. With guitars carved into machine guns and military uniforms crafted from traditional batik, the group is a collective of artists (including the Australian Danius Kesminas) and members of other Yogyakarta bands — not without their own self-parody — in a riotous experiment of art and music. 6 For all Hahan’s attacks on art infrastructure, however encumbered by commercial pressures, manipulation and hierarchies, there is a sense of acceptance. The artists won’t be able to escape the system and dubious characters won’t be changed by the structures they maintain. But they can’t stop the artists painting them. 7 Tarun Nagesh 1 Santy Saptari, ‘The roles of private industry in the creation and development of art in Indonesia’, in Closing the Gap [exhibition catalogue], Melbourne International Fine Art Gallery, Melbourne, 2011, pp.22–3. 2 Patricia Chen, ‘The South-East Asian art market 2005–2010: An overview’, in Closing the Gap [exhibition catalogue], p.32. 3 Biljana Ciric, ‘Individuals as medium: New models of mondialite’, in Contemporaneity: Contemporary Art in Indonesia [exhibition catalogue], Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai, 2010, p.46. 4 This painting references the publication Serenella Ciclitira (ed.), Indonesian Eye: Contemporary Indonesian Art , Skira, Milan, 2011. 5 Art Now is a series published by art book publisher Taschen, consisting of biographies of an international selection of contemporary artists. 6 Nicolas Low, ‘Punkasila at MUMA’, Art Monthly Australia , no.244, October 2011, p.31. 7 Artist statements, supplied by the artist, were used to research this essay. UJI HANDOKO EKO SAPUTRO (aka HAHAN) The ‘big artist’ 121