NOT I, AM I
Group Exhibition
AGUS SUWAGE, ASTARI RASJID, ALTJE ULLY PANJAITAN, CLAIRE SHERWOOD, SHARON TRUMBULL, TEDDY S. DARMAWAN, UGO S. UNTORO, VICTORIA MONTERO
April 5 - May 5, 2002
CP ARTSPACE, Washington DC, USA




Not I. Am I ?

In reading a work of art, we are used to observe individual uniqueness, as we believe that the individual has the capacity to control and mould the nature and the reality. This individual capacity is in an extreme position facing traditions, collectivity, and norms at the other extreme. In general traditions, collectivity and norms tend to accept reality and idealize equilibrium, while the individual tends to defy the sense of order as he or she tries to overpower the nature. In such overpowering projects, mind and ideas are believed to play a crucial role. In this world of ideas, the reality in question is not the natural reality but the reality to be fulfilled. Such reality is thus absolute.

In art that adopts belief as its frame the artist is perceived as an individual who conceptualizers reality. As an individual, the artist is believed to exist in an fixed and autonomous position. Representation in the artist’s work (a process of producing meanings) is a result of a correspondence between concept and reality. Due to the position of the artist, this correspondence is also believed to be autonomous in the sense that the correspondence is not influenced by factor by any outside the two-way relationship between concept and reality.

All artists in this exhibition – Claire Sherwood, Astari Rasjid, Sharon Trumbull, Altje Ully Panjaitan, Victoria Montero, Agus Suwage, Ugo Untoro and Teddy Darmawan – are questioning their individual selves. Some of them use self-portraits to take such personal matters to the surface, and some others use the body as the sign of the self. The question is : Are they expressing the existence of an autonomous individual through their work? Do representations in their work tend to conceptualize the reality? Do the artists seek absolute meanings in their representations? The answer to all those questions turns out to be: No.

All work of the eight artists indeed raises the question of “who am I”. However, in my reading, the question is expresend not in a conventional sense but in a very hesitant tone instead. Thus, in my view, individuality in their work is far from being an “auratic” individuality. The individual’s position in these representations is not central. The position of the self in their work is “ex-centric” (it has no fixed center). In raising the question “who am I,” the position of the individual is continuously changed. The individual does not always take an opposite position to the collective.

Representations in the work of those eight artists no longer deal with the production of meanings. The representations tend only to signify realities. Within this signifying process the signifying field of the “I” is perpetually undergoing reconfiguration.

It is then no longer relevant to consider the autonomy of the relationship between concept and reality. The relationship has become highly unstable and is influenced by other signifying fields. Even the relationship between the self and the self-identification as been in the representations in the eight artists’ work is only temporary.

These American and Indonesian artists are living at a time when the communications revolution propels the globalization of techno-industrial products. As is often discussed, in a condition like this the technology and the mass-production system become highly dominant. The impact of this is such that the individual effort to understand reality is often bombarded by images, signs, and symbols whose products are not seeking any value whatsoever.

Images, signs and symbols become the dominant representations. In Water Benjamin’s analysis, the images, signs and symbols of the techno-industrial are influencing human’s perception and sensibility to the extent that they control the perception and sensibility. Therefore reality in anyone’s inderstanding, as Jean Baudrillard has once stated, is no longer the actual reality but a hyper-reality formed by information.

The idiom “Not I” used in this exhibitions aims to refer to Samuel Beckett’s drama “Not I”. This absurd drama uses only player and portrays a housewife in a dialog with herself amidst the hustle-and bustle of a supermarket. The monologue is centered on the movement of the mout talking with a very high rhythm, and can be read as the individual effort to reject the dominating absurd conditions.

At present, the absurdity can be read as the confrontation between existential reaction to the alienated condition expressed by Beckett in “Not I” in one side and the condition bombarded by the the moral ethics which are inseparable from the modern world’s techo-industrial norms in the other side. Positioned between the two pressure, the impetus to reject, expressed through the statement “Not I”, has clearly no place at all.

The impact of such situations is that the absurd statement of “Not I”, undergoes a metamorphose and becomes a weak existential question “Am I”. The combination between the absurd statement and the existential question mirrors the unstable and unfixed individual position. In questioning “who am I”, the individual is torn by the drive to look inward and the thrust to look outward. Sometimes the individual is outside looking in, and sometimes the individual is inside looking out.

In such condition, the question “who am I” raised by the eight artists in this exhibitions is a small window left to seek meanings in reality. In my view the questions has a spiritual room that functions as an “emergency door” to set the individual free from the beleaguered condition. In this spiritual room, sensibility interacts with personal experiences and enables sublimation to take place. Such sublimation does not turn the pain into beauty, but changes the pain into a statement of pain that reduces its terrorized experience.

Jim Supangkat | curator

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