Years ago, a friend talked to me about how “It’s rare for women to be acclaimed as artists,” citing how a majority of well-known maestros in art were men.
While this statement may be true at face value — I suspect few laypeople could name, off the top of their head, women in art other than Frida Kahlo — the deeper issue underneath is that of opportunity, visibility, and power. For one, the publication-machines that circulate value to form our knowledge of ‘master artists’ has historically tended to favour men.
So when I learnt that Museum MACAN, in collaboration with Wikimedia Indonesia, had arranged a programme called Sumber Sejarah Terbuka: Seni Rupa oleh Seniman Perempuan Indonesia (Open-Source Knowledge: Art by Indonesian Women Artists), I was immediately drawn to contribute to the initiative. This was the information that I received from their Instagram page:
Sumber Sejarah Terbuka is a programme that aims to document and proliferate art-related history. Participants are given training to write articles on the open-source encyclopedia which anyone can access, Wikipedia. And this is not the programme’s first run: at least one previous event by MACAN and Wikimedia Indonesia about mapping art exhibitions throughout the country has been held in March 2018.
As stated in the posters above, this programme would run for two days, and included free entry to MACAN’s current exhibition as well as a curatorial tour. These perks definitely further enticed me to join! So I sent an email to the organisers, stating my interest and qualifications. Then the day before the event, I received a reply which detailed the rundown, programme brief, and a confirmation for my attendance.
On the D-day, I headed to the museum in AKR Tower, Jakarta Barat by way of commuter line + Go-Car from Tanahabang Station. (I arrived late.) Participants — around twenty of us, ranging from high school students to early 20s — had gathered in the auditorium at Level 6, and by the time I arrived, the curatorial tour around the exhibition had already begun.
This tour was led by Renjana Widyakirana, who is MACAN’s Education and Public Program Coordinator. (Her name was familiar to me, and I found out later that Renjana is the writer of this review of ICAD 2017, which I’d enjoyed.) She explained one by one the significance of artworks in the clusters of exhibitions, beginning with Arahmaiani’s “The Past Has Not Passed”, then Lee Mingwei’s “Seven Stories”, and further on the sixth floor, On Kawara’s “Reading” and the Pop Art exhibition from the museum’s permanent collection. (I’ll write more about the exhibition itself in a future post.)
After the tour, we sat down to a presentation and discussion about women artists of Indonesia, facilitated by an assistant curator of Museum MACAN. A majority of the presentation was about Arahmaiani, as an artist who is Indonesian, Muslim, and a woman — and of course, the highlight of MACAN’s current exhibit. Being an accomplished performance artist whose works were shown around the world, it is indicative of a structural lack of exposure that Arahmaiani is relatively unheard of in her own country of origin.
But while discussing Arahmaiani’s position within feminism (which was said to be ‘non-partisan’, as Arahmaiani reportedly never claimed her work to be part of the movement), unfortunately this assistant curator used a callous remark by likening radical feminism to a mass murder event. More specifically, the assistant curator said that Arahmaiani’s approach to provoke conversation about womanhood was more ‘balanced’ compared to that of feminazis. Yes, reader, he used the word “feminazi”. Kezia Alaia who was a fellow participant voiced her criticism, pointing out the irony and dangers of making such a comparison — while acting as the facilitating authority — during a topic that was supposed to centre women. I think this is a massively important feedback for the organisers to consider, and I hope that the assistant curator will reflect on his views.
Other artists discussed in the presentation included Melati Suryodarmo — who is known for performance art that centralises bodily endurance such as Eins und Eins (2016), wherein she drank ink that was later spewed out of her mouth and smeared all over the room, or I’m a Ghost in My Own House (2012), where she ground hundreds of kilograms of charcoal into dust for twelve hours; the Netherland-born artist Mella Jaarsma who went on to establish Cemeti Art House in Yogyakarta; the elusive genius of Emiria Soenassa, born in 1895, who was ‘lost to history’ despite being highly influential in the establishment of modern Indonesian art.
A valuable resource on the topic is the book Indonesian Women Artists by art critic Carla Bianpoen. Not all of the artists featured in books and catalogues have their own Wikipedia pages yet, and that was where the participants of this event were supposed to fill in. But before we could write articles for Wikipedia, we had to learn about the writing standards and the technicalities of posting. And for this, the Wikimedia Indonesia team had prepared a thorough presentation!
This is actually photo from a previous event by Museum MACAN + Wikimedia Indonesia and placed here for illustration purposes only, as my camera battery was low during the event. This photo is attributed to Rachmat04 [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], from Wikimedia Commons
We were directed to choose an artist and write an article by using references from Museum MACAN’s collection of books. One of the most important principles of writing articles for Wikipedia was to use references from credible sources (such as books and other printed publications), and to not plagiarise from these sources — the article should be a retelling in the contributor’s own words, quoting and giving credit where necessary.
The second day of the event was a continuation of writing articles and giving a presentation about our articles to be reviewed by the Wikimedia team. I’d written articles on the artist Astari and also about Arahmaiani’s exhibition in Bangkok, where she created significant site-specific works. The rest of the participants wrote about other Indonesian women artists. At the end of the event, we listed the birth year of all the artists we had written about, and placed them on a timeline to identify gaps of knowledge. It was discovered that there was a lack of articles about Indonesian artists born around 1960 — a potential topic to be explored why in a future event.
One feedback I have is that the programme could be more efficient if squeezed into a one-day affair. However, the organisers had other considerations, including that training events usually required to be at least two days for institutions’ paid absence. Nevertheless, I think this is a great initiative to promote access to history about art and artists, on top of proliferating knowledge which anyone could access. I hope it would be able to run on a larger scale in the future.
–
I really appreciate Museum MACAN’s array of education programmes and events, which are always updated on their Instagram. I also highly recommend the exhibition featuring Arahmaiani, On Kawara, and Lee Mingwei – catch it before it closes on March 10, 2019. Other than the Pop Art section and a few installations, tickets are needed for entry and can be pre-purchased on their website.
–
Museum MACAN (Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara)
AKR Tower, Level M
Jalan Panjang No. 5 Kebon Jeruk
Jakarta Barat 11530, Indonesia
Ph. +62 21 2212 1888
