The Jakarta Globe, September, 30, 2011
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| VICTIM OF INNOCENT Acrylic on canvas, 120 x 100 cm, 2011. |
Five painters, who together call themselves the Fighting Cocks Group, are presenting 20 new paintings at the exhibition, titled ‘Tubuh-tubuh Margin’, or ‘Marginal Bodies’.GREEK PHILOSOPHER, Plato once wrote that the human body was a prison for the soul, and the relationship between body and soul is again under examination in a painting exhibition at the Philo Art Space in Kemang, South Jakarta.
Five painters, who together call themselves the Fighting Cocks Group,are presenting 20 new paintings at the exhibition, titled ‘Tubuh-tubuh Margin’, or ‘Marginal Bodies’.
Painters Nurul Hayat, Iqrar Dinata, Multazam Kamil, Priyaris Munandar and Moch Basori are five promising graduates of the Indonesian Institute of Arts (ISI) in Yogyakarta. As a collective, their aim is to create art that promotes discourse on social or political issues.
Their latest target is the subjugation of body and soul by social forces — the ‘marginal bodies’ of the exhibition’s title.
Curator Tommy F. Awuy said the human body had long been considered a barrier to reaching our full potential, as expressed by Plato. The aim of the Fighting Cocks Group, he said, was ‘to portray the human body’s challenges and perceptions’, to question the limits placed by the body on the aspirations of human endeavor and self-fulfillment.
Painter Nurul Hayat, known as Acil, finds his starting point by turning Plato’s theory on its head. He claims it is not the body that imprisons the soul, but rather the soul, or the mind, that imprisons the body.
Acil’s paintings portray bodies trapped in spaces resembling cityscapes blended with industrial machinery, or being dragged helplessly along, incorporated into the tangled city as pipes or pumps.
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| MENCARI MERCUSUAR Acrylic on canvas, 145 x 220 cm, 2010 |
One of his paintings, ‘Mencari Mercusuar’ (Looking for the Lighthouse), depicts a mess of human bodies with expressionless faces feeling their way through a jumble of shapes and symbols.
It seems Acil is trying to show how our minds can become lost in the barrage of information we face in modern societies, to the point that we forget our bodies — ourselves — and our goals in life.
Tommy added that it was the ideals we feel forced to live up to that block our bodies from naturally finding a way through life.
Another of the Fighting Cocks Group, Priyaris Munandar or Aris, takes a similar approach by showing how social structures subjugate our bodies and therefore our minds.
Aris’s paintings at first appear to be abstract compositions made up of smudges and stripes, but on closer inspection the viewer can see that each line is in fact a collection of human bodies.
The bodies in Aris’s paintings are organized into lines representing social structures, with some standing apart as leaders while the majority are forced to stand in line, without autonomy or personality.
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| GERBANG PINTU HARAPAN Acrylic on canvas, 150 x 150 cm, 2011 |
One painting, titled ‘Gerbang Pintu Harapan’ (The Gates of Hope), depicts bodies standing together as tribes, some armed with spears.
Tommy said that Aris aimed to show how our bodies are weakened by social structures that make it almost impossible for us to become independent agents of change.
Iqrar Dinata brings the focus even closer to the body with his portraits of young girls in simple poses, each expressing an aura of sadness. One girl is blindfolded, while another shows signs of bruising around her eyes and mouth. Tommy explained that Iqrar aimed to show how social ideals affect our concept of self from a young age.
“In Iqrar’s paintings, the history of the body is exposed very clearly,” Tommy said. “Social construction is depicted as a form of violence against our bodies.”
In one painting, titled ‘Silent’, a little girl aged 3 or 4 is depicted looking directly toward the viewer. She appears to challenge the viewer with a look that could indicate inquisitiveness, or perhaps a deep sadness verging on tears.
Tommy said, it was women’s bodies that suffered the most extreme forms of physical and emotional violence in modern societies.
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| KUTUNGGU DI JAKARTA Oil on canvas, 120 x 120 cm, 2010 |
In his paintings, Multazam Kamil, or Zam, states more clearly what forms of violence and subjugation modern women suffer. His painting 'Kutunggu di Jakarta' (I’m Waiting in Jakarta) depicts a faceless woman in an inviting pose, sitting in front of a simplified map of the capital.
Zam aims to highlight how the physical body and the desire it provokes can get in the way of genuine relations between individuals. Tommy said, the lack of detail on the woman’s form shows how we passively accept the norms and ideals assigned to our bodies by others in society.
Finally, Moch Basori puts another spin on the exhibition’s theme by exploring the relationship between the body and time.
Known for his mixed media paintings that incorporate materials such as coconut fiber, wood, brass and cloth, Basori depicts ethereal, cosmic bodies racing through space in a rainbow of colors.
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| HUNTING DOWN THE TIME Mixed media on canvas, 100 x 140 cm, 2011 |
His painting ‘Berburu Waktu’ (Hunting Down Time) shows a spirit-figure flying through space with the Earth clasped between her hands.
Tommy said, Basori’s intention was to show how the realization that our bodies are always racing against time can free us from feeling tied to earthly things.
The soul, Basori seems to argue, can in fact be as free as the time-constrained body allows it to be.
Opened earlier this week, the exhibition will run until Oct. 10.
TASA NUGRAZA BARLEY
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