Defining Mella Jaarsma is a complex business, as she cannot be fitted into any neat category. She stands on a unique threshold, belonging to Indonesia and Netherlands, neither authentically Indonesian nor Dutch. Moving against the grain, her art education brought her from the Netherlands to Indonesia on a personal exploration of shadow and light. She has now called Yogyakarta home these past twenty years, in the meantime establishing herself as a moving force in Indonesia’s contemporary art scene. This historical city is a locus of conflicting forces. It is feudal yet egalitarian, a product of colonial powers yet anti-colonial, urban yet closely rural. It straddles the traditional and the contemporary, at once the heartland of traditional Javanese culture and centre of contemporary Indonesian art.
Against the epic backdrop of Central Java’s history and memory, Mella has had to face her fair share of marginalization and prejudices. She has had to negotiate the tensions within this society, vilified for her ‘white otherness’ in an environment weighed down by strife, still coming to terms with issues of identity, racial hegemony and religious hatred. The process of un-learning and re-learning a new way of life as she shed her Dutch upbringing would have been displacing and overwhelming; but the attempt to belong to Indonesia would have been a greater challenge.
Mellaâs time in Yogyakarta has taught her to look beyond the superficial layers of things. From the height of Suharto’s New Order regime to post-Reformasi, her art has been molded by historical turning points in her surrounding environment. She works from a unique perspective – that of an insider/outsider, in between worlds, at once detached from and involved in that environment. Her work reflects the tensions of her surrounding and simultaneously describes the context/s in which these tensions are encountered, experienced and produced. They communicate on various cultural levels, intending to provoke, extend into wider issues, challenging viewpoints and inviting multiple interpretations. Mella’s elaborate costume installations (usually made out of animal skins, horns, etc.) adopt the notion of garments as an outward or symbolic expression. They are loaded metaphors of race, sexuality, authenticity and origins. They deconstruct identities; unearth deeper underlying issues of cultural representation, questioning humanity, individualism, displacement and migration, the sacred and the profane. Austere and usually shroud-like, the costumes cover the body and face with openings to reveal the eyes or expose other body parts.
The images adopted are direct and simplistic but stunning nonetheless. Read from the Muslim context, the image of the shroud, commonly associated with the jilbab, or the muslim veil, unleashes hypersensitive issues of belief, taboos and women’s rights. Her choice of materials has been carefully made to reinforce the dramatic impact of these key idioms in her work. Working with animal skins, horns, emblems and a wide range of other materials, these costumes are corporeal and charged, addressing identity issues such as ethnicity, class and gender politics. One of the most striking works in an exhibition called ‘Moral Pointers’ (2002), ‘Shameless Gold’, made from naturally gold coloured cocoons from caterpillars that live in avocado and cashew nut trees (cricula trifenestrata helf), comments on material wealth and the extreme economic gaps within Indonesian society. It is associated with the moneyed rich and their big fancy gold cars, ostentatious watches and adornment. As the rich are often politically influential, gold also implies corruption, greed and nepotism, the underbelly of the countryâs tangled political system. For the poor, or those from the lower classes, gold is seen as their only form of security. It is common practice among them to exchange their wages and earnings for gold, a liquid asset, in place of cash savings in the bank, which can be ‘unreliable’, as experienced during the 1997 economic crash when the value of the Rupiah plummeted.
‘Who’s the Hunter? Who’s the Killer? Who’s the Feeder?’ And who’s the Healer? These are the underlying questions which form the work ‘The Warrior’ (2003). Consisting of three ‘skins’ titled ‘The Warrior’ (made out of 16 Indonesian military uniforms), ‘The Feeder’ (made from dried pungent ink fish and squids) and ‘The Healer’, (traditional Indonesian and Chinese medicinal herbs including seahorses and sea dragons), each costume is connected to a wok or pan and become ingredients of fortifying broth or soup, gently brewing, and later offered to the audience. In many ways, the interactive element in this body of work can be seen as a precursor to works such as ‘Shelter-Me’ (2005). It seems fitting to address the concept of shelter in our current age of fear. ‘Refugee Only’ and ‘The Shelter’ series, developed in 2003 2004, relate to a time when mysterious plagues (SARS in particular) began to pose a widespread threat to Asia, and rancour in the Middle East was becoming further aggravated by conflicting responses towards the Iraqi war. Terrorism — post 9/11, the continuing bombings in Bali and Jakarta, and around the worldâhad started to cast its ominous shadow worldwide.
Our primordial instinct to seek shelter, physical and/or emotional, during such troubled times and the desire to hide away, to seek solace, to escape, avoid or slip away unnoticed is expressed through costumes which double as ‘flexible housings’. Made out of utility materials such as rubber sheets, leather straps, metal buckles, and waterproof canvas, they adopt the basic function of a roof above one’s head to protect us from the sun and the rain. They are minimal constructions required for protection, not yet a shape of a house, directly related to the proportions of the human body. The notion of shelter presupposes a sense of removal or detachment, solitude, implying a disengagement from the outside world, or perhaps sacrificing something for the sake of protection and security. By making enough space for one person only, and some are movable constructions, the costumes give the feeling that the person is confined within a certain spot. It tells us that this safe space or ‘wall’ which we build around ourselves can be confining and limiting. It has the ability to trap, to become claustrophobic, and suffocate as we become cut off from the rest of society. The security of this space closes in on us; we are made vulnerable by the very object that is meant to protect us. ‘Peranakan Shelter (Small)’ and ‘Peranakan Shelter (Medium)’ is the result of Mella’s experiences in Singapore and Malaysia during her residency in Studio 106 (Singapore, 2003) and Rimbun Dahan (Malaysia, 2004). Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore’s shared Peranakan heritage becomes the key focus in these costumes. An upturned metal basin –usually used for holding water or as a communal rice bowl –doubles as a headgear, roof or helmet to keep the wearer safe. Meanwhile, batik common to all three countries, Chinese soup spoons, Buddhist beads and the image of the Laughing Buddha’s exposed belly –common among Taoists Singaporeans, Malaysians and Indonesians– add an unusual twist to the shroud-like costumes. They are whimsical and kitschy, recalling costumes of agit-theatre, so commonly associated with Indonesian street protests in the late 1980’s and 1990’s.
Looking connects us to Mella’s work; it pivots on the gaze and the ‘Other’. Her costumes are brought to life by models standing motionless beneath these ‘skins’. The compulsion to stare at them is overwhelming. Our eyes are inextricably drawn to them even if the quiet voice in us tells that it is rude to stare. It is difficult to detect who stands silently behind this shroud. His or her eyes give no clue. They are no longer instruments of vision, merely its object. The models are weakened by the inward gaze of others, as they stand immobile, frozen in their private thoughts. People regard and ignore them in the same way tourists do exotic attractions. Some approach with trepidation, too embarrassed to look yet too curious not to. Others cast a cursory glance and walk away, while some examine with utmost attention, prodding and poking, as though the person standing behind this costume is inanimate.
‘Shelter-Me’ and ‘Citysins’ (2005) marks a departure from Mella’s costume installations. It was first seen at CP Biennale 2005 and later at the YOKOHAMA 2005 International Triennale of Contemporary Art, combining performance and video, and installation. The CP Biennale version ‘Citysins’ consists of an installation of several ‘shelters’ common to the Indonesian landscape such as makeshift roadside homes/shelters, huts and ‘warung’ (street stalls). Tarpaulin, wood bark, zinc sheets and recycled Javanese wood are the primary materials for construction. These ‘shelters’ are no longer shaped like shrouds. They are now structures, built to accommodate more than one person, to encourage greater audience participation. The models beneath or wearing these ‘shelters’ are no longer inanimate. They beckon the audience over, ‘come in(side) for a quick chat’ –about topics of the day, such as sex for instance, and offer them parting gifts in the form of protection (condoms) or nourishment (bananas). It is no longer just about the gaze; the relationship between audience and work has become a closer connection. By inviting the audience to enter the work, the artist is offering us the opportunity to step into the contexts of each situation, immerse ourselves in its conditions, and get a view from the ‘other side’. In Yokohama, the ‘shelters’ were brought to various parts of the city to co-exist and assimilate with existing environments, for example, along the pedestrian walkway, by a row of shop or at the pier. The video, an added feature to the existing installation, documents the models standing within these shelters for several minutes before moving to another site. While the work continues to explore the concept of shelter, it also touches on issues of migration, mobility and shifting cultural identities.
“Asal”, – ‘authentic’, is used in Bahasa Indonesia to question authenticity, or origin. The word, originally from the Arabic language, has travelled across the globe to Indonesia and become a part of the artistâs daily vocabulary. A few times a day, when I am out on the street, I hear the question, “Asal dari mana?” or “Where are you from?” As a Dutch person living in Indonesia, it is a common question encountered by the artist and often used as an icebreaker to open a conversation. ‘Asal’ is also the title of a work, made especially for the artistâs solo exhibition in Tehran (2005). A particular cloud motif plays a central role in this work – it can be found in Persian paintings from the Timurid, (Safavid period, 14 to 18th century AD) and also often appears in Chinese paintings and ceramics of the same era, commonly known as ‘Guanying’ or the Goddess of Mercy clouds, as well as in traditional Indonesian batik, where the ‘Mega Mendung’ cloud motif is particular to the Sultanate of Cirebon (Northern Java). The source of this commonly shared cloud motif is unclear, and it is used as a metaphor to explore the issue of migration and to question cultural origin and identity. ‘Which and who is indigenous?’ Ownership of this image cannot be claimed by any particular culture and therefore challenges the concept of authenticity. The workâs broad scope also makes reference to migration, power, and the way in which early trade and travel has shaped the geography and cultures of the world.
Mella’s work is laden with no great ‘take-home’ messages. She highlights the ruptures in our supposed perfect world and tells us that the ground we walk on is rarely solid. Who has the upper hand in Mella Jaarsma’s inversed world? You feed me. I point my keris at you. Who is the refugee? Who is the oppressor? Who is the victim and who wields power? Food turns to poison, taboos become accepted norms and shelters transform into traps. From the images, they tell us we are barbaric, contradictory, complex. Indeed, Man has moved away from his cave and we have since traded our hides and weapons for technological advances and urban accoutrements. Yet we kill, we feed, we hunt, we hide and we heal; barely escaping our savagery, merciless with our excesses and follies, and our horrifying capacity to summon up evil in the name of justice, or survival or for mankind’s greater good. Through the inversion of things, she reveals how different and unsettling the world might seem from the reverse viewpoint. As the common adage goes, ‘there are two sides to every story’; yet Mella’s observations tell us there are more, that life is more convoluted than any single narrative, and human nature is far too complex to be mapped out –that ethics and moral values are less clear cut than we would like to admit.
Adeline Ooi
March 2006, Kuala Lumpur