EDITED MEMORIES
Solo Exhibition by Dikdik Sayahdikumullah
June 9 - July 7, 2004
CP ARTSPACE, JAKARTA




EDITED MEMORIES

Memory plays an important role in human civilization. Many cultural aspects actually function with the support of memory. Myths and customs in a community can be regarded as manifestations of collective memories. These important memories cannot naturally be separated from the events and affairs of the community, which then become lived-experience. In the past, those events and affairs were mostly related to natural facts and occurrences, thus giving birth to myths. In a more recent past, the events and experience of the people, or a group of people, are recorded as history. Not all events should be remembered and frozen as historical notes. Efforts to commemorate the past – such as ceremonies, festivities, monuments, museums or other forms of institutionalized collective memories – play an important role in shaping and re-shaping the cultural, social, and political identity, and cannot, therefore, be separated from the politics of power and culture. Decision on what kind of history that must be recorded, and how to record it, depends highly on who is in power and who gets to make the decision. We know thus various versions of history. From time to time, there are efforts to revise the history due to shifts in power, or when there are certain parties who think that the area recorded is too narrow. In the context of art history, for example, there have been efforts to revise the art history, with the aim of including more groups of artists who had been marginalized in the annals of the modern art history.

Similarly for an artist, memories of the past can play an important role in his or her artistic journey. Memories, formed by life events and the explored knowledge, become the artist’s personal experience and determine the motif and the quality of his or her work. Artists can make use of their memories of the past as the subject matter of their works. Indeed, art can become a vessel in which memories of the past are re-lived or brought back to life. Everyone, including artists, has certainly been through events and experiences deemed as important for their lives, be they pleasant or painful.

However, for an artist to present his or her personal memory is not merely a matter of re-describing a past event; instead, it can serve as a re-statement and re-valuation of the event. In other words, the notes of the memory are influenced more by the artist’s opinion and intention, which are shaped in the present time. The construction of the memory does not necessarily agree with the actual event; what is experience is not necessarily what is portrayed. The memory is shaped into a new script. The works of the well-known French artist Christian Bolstanski, for example, betray a tendency to reflect a past that might not be directly experienced by the artist himself. Many of Bolstanski works are in the form of vague old pictures, portraying faces of children set under a dim light, together with cookie cans. The works succeed in constructing a gloomy mood, conjuring memory of the holocaust in the time of the Nazi. Bolstanski, a Jewish, did not experience directly the genocide; he was born in 1944. It was his father who had been through that bitter period of history, and survived by hiding in an underground room in Paris.

There are also times when memories that are brought back to life in the works of an artist is a form of externalized traumatic tensions and memories, which had been directly experienced by the artist. This is apparent in the works of the Polish artist Magdalena Abakanowicz. Her installation work, in the form of a group of bodies made of snacks, reflects her sense of panic and trauma of having to watch the horror of the World War II during her adolescence, when she was forced to move around here-and-there along with a mass of unknown people.

Similarly, Dikdik Sayahdikumullah’s in the exhibition Edited Memories reflect the personal experience in the life of the artist. In Dikdik’s case, although the works are rooted in the memory of his past, it is not extremely important whether the portrayed event agrees with the actual event that has taken place, or whether much of the artist’s imagination has been involved. Should the depictions of events truly reflect the actual events as they are, this fact does not play an important part in the judging of Dikdik’s works. This because the strength of his works does not lie in the intensity of the experience that the artist has been through. Instead, the strength is in his ability to construct an intense drama in his canvasses, using a style and a way of work that are highly personal. The works succeed in enchanting the audience, making them stop for while in front of the works as they ponder on the possible meanings of the paintings. The intensity of the audience’s reading, therefore, is constructed by way of the works themselves, which are no longer bound to the events that the artist has actually been trough. The intensity of the reading is thus shaped by the visual construction of the work and their myriad possible meanings.

ndeed, Dikdik has reconstructed his memory in order to produce some visual text that can context of the present affairs. As a form of personal expressions, the text in Dikdik’s works naturally takes sides. In other words, the rearrangement of memories also involves a measure of partisanship; thus, the figure of the artist or figures related with the artist become the protagonists. However, this tendency is, again, cannot be read in black-and-white in Dikdik’s works. Such side taking only happens in the mind of the artist when her or she is in the process of creating the work, and when the artist views his or her works. Here lies the political motive of the: when personally the artist plays the role of the puppet master who is able to tinker with meanings and determine the “certainty of meanings become a sort of prerogative right of the artist.

Dikdik’s understanding about the complexity of the culture, the social-political situations, and the plurality of the art discourses brings about a way of thinking that is also complex. This is reflected in Dikdik’s works that are indeed diffcult to decipher. For Dikdik, the important thing is not how to produce works that confirm-and can be confirmed-with his personal experience, but how the reconstruction efforts can be extended into a wider field.

The icons in Dikdik’s paintings, can be seen as allegorical figures. Such allegorical tendency clearly betrays the political motives of the artist. Through such allegorical approach, the artist is playing on meanings that might be constructed, as the constructed meanings in the contemporary art are highly dependent on the references that the audience already have with them.

The icon in Dikdik’s works clearly represent the religion of islam. However, these icons very rarely appear on the religiously nuanced canvasses of some other Indonesian artist. The beraded figure with the robe and turban quickly reminds us to Shiite leaders in Iran, whose images are received in Indonesia by way of mass-media portrayals. Representations of the Shiite Moslems can be read differently in the context of the social-political religiosity of Islam in Indonesia. Another figure that always appears on Dikdik’s canvasses is the figure of a middle-aged man, often portrayed using sarong and a peci, and sometimes also a pair of long, cotton trousers. This figure becomes a familiar local figure. In some of Dikdik’s paintings, a winged figure is also portrayed, seemingly as a victim: his presence is quite strongly felt as Dikdik invariably portrays him at the center of the canvas. Aside from those figures, there are often depictions of pointing hands as well. Thus, the configurations of the visual text in the works of Dikdik Sayahdikumullah can produce varying narrations and meanings. This becomes precisely the poetic strength of Dikdik’s works. When almost all the problems and complexity of the contemporary culture can no longer be read monolithically, Dikdik lets the audience read and assign meanings to the part of the audience. The audience who, for example, do not strongly understand the dimensions of the groupings and the variety of Islam, might find the figures in Dikdik’s canvasses as merely figures representing the world of Islam. The portrayal of the figure in robes and tuban might be read as a depiction of fundamentalist Islam.

It is clear Dikdik has a motive to extend the personal matters into a vaster region. The matter of religion cannot be separated from matters of the politics and power. In this case, Dikdik’s works directly represent the political dimension of the current situation, even up to the global constellation. In this case, the motive of the artist in constructing the text of the matter at hand seems to be neutral, although the text is related to the artist’s own belief. However, in privater or in the artist’s personal perception, the artist may actually take sides. In Dikdik’s case, there is a matter of Islam, of religiosity; and Indonesia is also affected by the global feud involving religious dimensions. Here, the complexity of the Islamic religiosity becomes the consciousness of the artist, so much so that the allegorical potentials has a sophistication of content in their representations.

However, we can always try to construct meanings out of the artist’s own experience. Understanding that Dikdik’s works are notes on his life experience, we may infer that the figures appearing in his canvasses are characters that have been very close to him. The middle-aged man in Dikdik’s paintings is perhaps his own father. The dramatic atmosphere presented in the paintings, which is further strengthened by titles such as Black Bigots and Mencabut Bulu Badai (Tearing out the feathers of the strom), leads us to the idea that the Father might have been through some bitter events. The poetic strength that artist has contructed hits the target: the possible meanings about the existence of a victim, an accusation, power, conflicts and the mystery surrounding it all. The layered backgraound presenting fragments of events in Dikdik’s gloomy, dim, and eerie paintings can be said as reflecting various traumatic occurrences that many groups in the society have gone through, the occurrences that had remained hidden. The configuration of the religious icons and the figures in the dim atmosphere seems to reflect the conflict that has affected the artist. However, it remains unclear what kind of events that has actually taken place, and what the main figure had done and been through.

Eventually for Dikdik, however, the rearrangement of of the past memories merely serves as an alibi of sorts to paint and produce strong and interesting works. The matter of painting itself, therefore, becomes the main focus in the creative process. Dikdik’s works are thus far from merely representing events of the past that are still alive in his memory. Similarly, the works do not serve as a therapy or catharsis for the artist. Every artist needs some intensity in creating his or her works. With the stimulant of the themes taken from his personal experience, Dikdik’s intensity in composing the paintings has worked out fine. The process of painting becomes a terrain where the artist conducts unceasing internal dialogues, be it in the composition of the narration or in its depiction. Therefore, choices about which technique and style to use are very much determined by the quality of the drama that the artist wishes to construct. The visual configuration using the techniques of shading and hatches, color nuances, and brush lines, becomes a very important consideration for the artist. This shows that Dikdik is an artist with a strong conceptual tradition in contructing his works. Some of his works that carry different theme (which are not included in this exhibition) are created in the same period as when he prepared the works for this exhibition. In those other works, Dikdik showsan entirely different style and way of working. The usage of the robed and turbaned icon in the works he prepares for this exhibition, according to Dikdik, is very important, as it stresses on the work’s allegorical meaning. This shows how important it is for Dikdik to understand first the matter he wishes to use as a theme, and then to “translate” it to the canvasses. Dikdik calls his creative tendency as “ Allegorical Realism” – a genre that might seem paradoxical: on one hand, it wishes to convey the reality as is common in Realism; on the other hand, the reality is convered using allegorical approach, wishing to talk “differently” about a depiction. Dikdik, however, succeeds in managing these seemingly paradoxical approaches. The figures that are direct representations of the chacacters he wishes to depict; and the allegorical figures that refer to some bigger meanings – they are both well arranged and depicted in Dikdik’s paintings.

For the art realm in Bandung, especially for the painting circle of ITB, Dikdik’s presence can provide some fresh air and serve as a trigger for young painters from ITB to enliven again the Indonesian painting realm. In this case, the fresh air that Dikdik carries with him is in the form of a tendency that might not be popular for the Bandung school; namely, the representational tendency, especially one that is based on realism. Eventually, Dikdik’s works seem to strengthen Janet Wolff’s statement, as quated from Walter Benjamin: “…that it is impossible for a work to be politically correct unless it is also aesthetically correct. “Therefore, the understanding of discourses and the capacity of his skills become the components that are continually developed by Dikdik Sayahdikumullah. We might expect that in the future Dikdik will become one of the important painters in the Indonesian art realm.

Asmudjo Jono Irianto | Curator

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