OSCAR MOTULLOH
The Art of Dying
August 7 - September 7 2002
CP ARTSPACE, Washington DC, USA




History & Death

As a photojournalist in an Indonesian newsroom, Oscar Motulloh regularly travels to various countries. Besides journalistic photographs, numerous photographic essays have often produced from such journeys and these photographic essays prove difficult to be categorized under the photojournalism genre. Oscar Motulloh’s photographic essays do not only depict the objective meanings and contextual representations of its object as is common in journalistic photography; these essays also present the symbolic meanings of the objects. The reality in Motulloh’s photographic essay is a reality that can openly read outside its context.

The Art of Dying, which is now being exhibited in CP Artspace, is one of Oscar Motulloh’s photographic essays with such tendency. This particular essay shows the pictures of graves that Motulloh took in Paris at the end of 2001. Not only does this essay tell the stories of the Parisian graves, it is also a reflection showing us Motulloh’s meditations on history and death.

Oscar Motulloh is a photographer with a penchant for graves. The pictures of graves that he makes show his interest in observing the communal death commemorations expressed through the forms of the graves. For years, Motulloh explores the many shapes of graves through his photography and find how the often decorative and artistic forms of the graves mirror a spirituality that in essence is the humans’ effort to foresee life after death.

In The Art of Dying, however, Motulloh does not merely explore the shapes of the graves. Into his essay, Motulloh adds the historical dimension of the graves. Such a measure makes his photographic essay also serve as an exploration of the social reality behind the death “celebrations” that find their outlets in the forms of the graves. In this exploration, Motulloh finds another dimension to the death commemorations that is neither spiritual nor religious.

The Art of Dying is Motulloh’s second meditation on history and death that the presents through photographic essays. His first meditation took form in his photographic essay The Voice of Angkor, which was exhibited in Jakarta in 1996.

In The Voice of Angkor, Motulloh does not simply present Angkor Wat as a mere historical temple compound in Cambodia, but he also captures pictures of the mass-graves in this hundred-kilometer-square temple compound: pictures of the temple rooms and spaces filled with human bones. Images of these mass-graves do not portray a celebration of death; they represent a tragedy. These are the graves of those murdered during the Khmer-Rouge’s slaughter under the Pol Pot regime, which was one of the most sinister mass-slaughters ever recorded in modern history.

Historical consciousness makes Motulloh see the Angkor Wat mass graves as a historical landmark depicting Cambodia’s slow descent into destruction. History records Angkor Wat not only as a development center of Buddhism, but also as the center of government. Between the 9th and the 11th century, Cambodia was a big kingdom and Angkor Wat was thus once an influential center of power. In the 12th century, Champa conquered Cambodia and since this defeat Cambodia’s glory never returned it keeps declining even today.

The mass graves that in Motulloh’s perception are the sign of Cambodia’s destruction, actually another reality. The mass graves are a part of Buddhist rituals to accompany the death of Pol Pot’s victims all over the country. Through this reality, Motulloh realizes that Angkor Wat is in fact still functioning as a spiritual place. Motulloh’s pictures show that there is an unchanging spirituality in Angkor Wat. Such spirituality manages to survive amidst Cambodia’s process of destruction that was rooted in the cruelty of Pol Pot’s regime against its own nation and people.

Such a paradox brings Motulloh to a meditation on history on the people in history, their death, and on how death is commemorated through the forms of the graves. The Art of Dying offers us glimpses of Motulloh’s meditations.

The Art of Dying has two parts; the first part consisting of twenty-four pictures is a representation of Motulloh’s contemplations expressed through the pictures of Parisian graves, with the graves of well-known historical figures as the highlight. The second part of the essay consisting of three pictures and two collections of pictures is a representation of his reflections expressed through fragments of Auguste Rodin’s works, Burghers of Calais and Gates of Hell. These are the pictures Motulloh took in the Rodin Museum of Paris.

In the first part of the essay, there is a picture showing Motulloh’s basic idea about the theme of The Art Dying. The pictures is titled Eternal Life and shows the grave of French industrialist, Charles Pigeon. The tomb’s reality that manages to capture Motulloh’s attention is the sculpture built on the grave. The sculpture is not of Pigeon in a grandiose pose. It is a sculpture of Pigeon and his wife, lying on their bed.

Motulloh reads this reality as a sign of the personal interest in commemorating death through the artistic form of the grave. The grave shows more of Charles Pigeon’s emotional relationship with his wife whatever his background may be than of Pigeon’s standing as a French inventor and industrialist. Such a personal portrayal signifies Pigeon’s Intervention commemorating his death. Charles Pigeon seemed to have planned his grave when he was still alive, and this is the sign that he had taken part in deciding how his death would be remembered through the form of his grave. This is what The Art of Dying means.

In Motulloh’s thought, Charles Pigeon’s grave shows a historical consciousness and also a consciousness to intervene history by using forms of graves, which have indeed been used to mark the currents of history. This is a universal tendency showing up all over the world and in all times. People in power who are sure of their marks in history, have always been involved in designing their graves.

Although the people are not always included in deciding histories, most histories are histories of the elites intervening the history using forms of graves is not merely done by the powerful. People and the forces against the powerful also have a chance in doing such intervention.

In Motulloh’s photographic essay, such phenomenon is expressed in the picture titled (The) Killing of a Journalist. This picture depicts the grave of the journalist Victor Noir who was shot dead by Pierre Bonaparte, Napoleon Ill’s nephew. The journalist was buried precisely at the place where he was shot and on his grave a sculpture was built showing him lying just like when he was murdered. The grave, it is easy to read, reflects the people’s rebellion against a repressive power. The era of the Napoleon dysnasty ended during the Second French Revolution, in 1848.

These pictures show that death commemorations with historical linkages are usually determined by how vast a dead person’s sociometric circle had been. Such historical commemorations are not always expressed through monumental or artistic forms of graves. Motulloh represents such inclination by showing us pictures of well-known figures’ tombs that are neither monumental nor artistic. Such graves turn out to be the signs of the celebrated history.

In Motulloh’s imaginations, the interventions of such well-known figures whose graves seem remarkably simple had been more complex than it looks like. They had not designed their graves. They had intervened in the commemoraties of their deaths by taking a heroic stance, putting the public life first and their personal life second, or by taking an attitude that gave priority to the search for personal values. In Motulloh’s mind, these powerful historical figures had foreseen their deaths and decided how their graves would be celebrated. This is The Art of Dying. In his imagination too, Motulloh ponders on the question whether such historical figures had also foreseen the spirituality of their death.

In the second part of The Art of Dying, Motulloh tries to explore the question. In this part, his pictures show a religious dimension that only fleetingly surfaces in the first part. In this second part of the essay, the religious dimension of Motulloh’s pictures arrives at the questions that no one can give sure answers to. This is the question about what happens after death, and what happens to those whose death are celebrated by history.

Motulloh tries to answer the question but not by using a religious stance. He still uses a historical perspective. This can be sen in his picture titled Hand of the Shadow & the Tomb of Napoleon. In this picture, he shows the detail of a hand in Rodin’s sculpture The Burghers of Calais. The angle Motulloh takes makes the hand seems to come from the sky and points at the tower of the chapel where Napoleon Bonaparte was buried.

The detail of the hand from Rodin’s sculpture reminds Motulloh of the detail of the hand in Michael Angelo’s masterpiece in the Sistine Chapel in Italy. In this work, Genesis, the creation of man is depicted through the meeting of the tips of Adam’s and God’s hands. The tension between the tip of the hand from Rodin’s sculpture and the tip of the chapel where Napoleon was buried is foreshadowed by Motulloh’s memory of Michel Angelo’s work in the Sistine Chapel.

The chapel in the picture titled Hand of the Shadow and the Tomb of Napoleon depict Motulloh’s questioning about the religious dimension of the deaths celebrated by history. Through the picture Motulloh seems to ask, what has Napoleon Bonaparte given to his people and the human race, and on what moral and religious bases?

His other pictures in the second part of The Art of Dying ponder on the question more deeply. The pictures depicting fragments of Rodin’s work, Gates of Hell, represent the question on whether the moral of history that records wars and murders goes hand-in-hand with the moral of religious. Will the heroes of history whose deaths are commermorated and whose graves become the marks of history enter the gates of heaven? Should the historical figures who had commited murders on behalf of a people or even of God not go through the Gates of Hell? About this Oscar Motulloh offers us something to muse about through his photographic essay.

Jim Supangkat | curator

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