“We wear our second skins every day” Mella Jaarsma [artist statement,1999]
Can humans choose who their parents will be? Is it possible that a person could determine what their parents look like, so that he/she could choose their body shape and the color of their skin and hair before they were born? I pose these questions to point out that humans actually do not have autonomous power to determine their self-identity.
On the one hand, the body is the identity we are given that we cannot refuse. Meanwhile, on the other hand, humanity has made the body into a code or meaningful symbol. Modern science has arbitrarily categorized the exterior human features —physical/biological characteristics that are naturally, genetically inherited— into various social classifications, such as gender and race. It is perceived that physical characteristics can explain a variety of different individual positions in the society, such as origin, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and level of intelligence. The belief in racial and gender classifications encourages the emergence of constructions and social hierarchies that, in practice, generates repression and discrimination, including, for example, in the extreme, colonialization, slavery, genocide, and gender violence.
When the body is no longer able to define itself, we wear various coverings that are associated with certain images in the presence of other people. A set of clothing, then, has a double function in overcoming the vulnerability of the body both physically and symbolically. In its symbolic function, clothing covers whatever should not be seen, while showing something that we wish to expose to other people. Wearing clothes in this way can be analogous to the process of self-identification where humans become ‘agents’, subjects that are actively involved in the formation of meaning about themselves.
The issues of the ‘body’, ‘coverings’, and the relationship between the two with identity have been the primarily focus of Mella Jaarsma’s attention for quite awhile. Since the early 1980s, Mella’s artistic journey has been colored by exploration of various art materials and media, ranging from illustration, photography, painting, objects, video, and installations, through performance art. Despite this variety of media, we can see how the ‘body’ and ‘coverings’ occupy the central position of her focus. Mella presents the human body and its coverings physically’in various ways and in various forms (costumes/clothes, veils, houses, tents, shelters). However, in addition to this, she also thinks about the body and coverings in a more basic and philosophical way, then uses her works to link to broader social and cultural issues as a way to initiate new dialog and stimulate new ideas.
Featuring selected works that she has created since the early 1990s, the exhibition ‘Fitting Room’ positions Mella Jaarsma’s works in the framework of the issue of cultural identity. ‘Fitting Room’ is a metaphor about the space for negotiation that is very subjective. In a fitting room, the individual (as the agent) has full, unhampered personal authority to dress him/herself. In the fitting room, one can experiment, try new clothes that had previously been considered to be unsuitable for their body, then can change to other clothes. The fitting room can be used as a place to test one’s authority to finding ‘themselves’. It is a space that can provide freedom to anyone to play any ‘role’— although this freedom in the end is always limited by the available choices.
Idea – Material – Form
Mella Jaarsma’s works often appear to be ‘simple’ because many of them use every day materials. Even the forms resemble domestic objects. There has yet to be any commentary on how this simplicity of form actually represents a strategy and artistic decision that has emerged out of a long exploration process.
Ever since she began to create art, Mella has yet to develop a particular visual style or personal medium. Her attention has always been focused on thematic issues: ideas, meanings and most importantly, how her work can provoke or stimulate thought and reflection. I liken the character of Mella’s works with a ‘direct’ linguistic expression, such as a narrative told without too many flourishes. If there are any decorative ornaments in her work’see, for example,‘Shelter Me’ (2005) and ‘Asal’ (‘Origin’, 2005), which present batik cloth with the’ Mega Mendung’ pattern’they are presented as concrete texts, suitable in the object. For more than 25 years as an artist, Mella’s works have never been excessive. I see this consistency as an important characteristic of Mella’s art.
Similar to the work of a visual anthropologist, one of the requirements of artistic production that Mella has followed continuously until the present is research of the various characteristics and typology of symbols, and how the meanings of these symbols are understood specifically by different groups in the community. In her research process, Mella often goes into the field, documents and notes various specific visual phenomena. In her works, the various signs or symbols she finds are often stretched, combined with other symbols, deconstructed, and played with, so that they are then formulated into a personal statement about a phenomenon.
The work, ‘Pralina’A Fire Altar’ (1993) is a fine example that illustrates Mella’s characteristic work pattern. It was created when Mella was involved with ‘Art and Nature’, a site-specific project in Munduk village in Bali, with a number of Indonesian and German artists. In the village, she was inspired to make an installation at an alter for cremating corpses, a practice that is still active in the Hindu-Balinese tradition. This was, of course, a risky idea, because the altar served an important function in the life of the community. However, through a personal approach, Mella secured permission to make the installation there, indeed, in a collaborative effort with the users of the altar. The local residents who took care of the altar were open to the innovation. The result was an installation that reflected an understanding of death as the ‘shadow of life’, and its reverse. This work was able to meld the practice of the creation of contemporary art with daily community ritual. The content of this work was more concrete, surpassing understanding of art installation as only a spatial visual product, because its function as an altar until the present day, has never been lost.
Mella’s personal experiences— as an artist who came from the Netherlands and then lived and worked for 25 years in Indonesia—has encouraged her artistic concept as a path for discussion about differences in perception and culture. Mella is aware that the meaning of a symbol is always changing—the meaning changes based on the context of time and space. Her work, ‘Peranakan Shelters’ (‘Shelters of Mixed Ethnic Origins’, 2004), for example, was in the form of a costume that combined the form of the belly of Buddha with an Indonesian army uniform. The pattern of combinations of signs in Mella’s work often contains juxtapositions that are provocative, controversial and paradoxical. In’ Peranakan Shelters, the Buddha belly that could be seen beneath the military costume implied the presence of a sense of spirituality/Buddhism in warfare. Whereas, in the context of Southeast Asia, the Buddha belly is a symbol that is related to wealth and good fortune.
In addition to the intension of stimulating dialogue, the juxtaposition of symbols in Mella’s works also represent a cultural hybrid of whose presence we are often unconscious because it is dominated by myths about originality or ownership of a symbol in the society. Mella perceives that culture is always stirred by contradictory and diverse values. With the passing of time, culture actually lives off of contradictions, tension, contact, exchange, and the mixture of different values, both visible and hidden. Mella’s works are an effort to dismantle stereotypes of a social culture by disentangling its symbols, then rearranging them into new configurations. Because of this, I consider Mella’s works to speak not only at the level of pure visual genealogy, but also social genealogy.
The work, ‘(Wo)man of Quality’ (2007), for example, provocatively aligns the concepts of machismos, religion, nationalism, feudalism, and militarism in an installation of costumes and performances that resemble a carnival/ritual parade. This work is an entry into a discussion of the culture of patriarchy that is still dominant in Indonesian society. Mella’s adoption of the parade as a performance medium is unique, as well as clever, because this ritual that has existed since ancient times is still practiced in a variety of contexts in societies throughout the world for different reasons’from the’ ngaben’ ceremony in Bali to the Mardi Gras in Australia. With the parade of costumes, Mella can speak this ‘universal’ language, while, at the same time, entering into a variety of public contexts. More recently, this form of the parade has emerged again in ‘The Last Animist’ (2008), which she created with Nindityo Adipurnomo.
Mella’s forms are always ambiguous’for example, in ‘Refugee Only’ (2003), which presents forms of clothes and tents, or ‘Shelter Me’ (I, II, III & IV, 2005), which combines the concept of clothes with architectural frames (food vendors, pavilions, and temples). The one thing that ties these ambiguous forms together is only the presence of the human body inside them. On the one hand, the combination of various concepts of body coverings (costumes/clothes, veils, houses, tents, shelters) can be read as an attempt to see identity as the omnipresent authority. However, on the other hand, the ambiguity of the form can also be seen as an artistic strategy to present an issue as a question, not an answer.
In the diversity of Mella’s works, there is always a meticulous choice of materials. She is aware of the ideological connotations of the objects produced and consumed by the society. The materials function not only as raw, neutral substances that can be manipulated into forms or idioms, but they also represent idioms or texts themselves, because they bring with them certain meanings of their own. In the work, ‘Hi-Inlander’ (1998’1999), animal skins (fish, kangaroo, frog, and chicken) that were used as veils’resembling the form of the traditional Islamic veil’were chosen because of their different connotations in different cultures. This work was Mella’s response to the ethnic riots that erupted in Indonesia during Reformasi and the targeting of Chinese-Indonesians by the rioting crowds. At that time, a Muslim costume could be used as a camouflage for survival purposes.
Map of the Fitting Room, Context
In her artistic journey,’Hi-Inlander’ is an important milestone in her artistic achievement. It can be said that Mella’s works on costumes began here. After this work, came others, including ‘I am Ethnic,’ ‘I Fry You’ (series I & II, 2001, 2000), and ‘SARA-swati’ (series I & II; 2000); ‘Shameless Gold,’ ‘The Follower,’ ‘Bolak-balik (‘Back-and-Forth’),’ and ‘Bule Bull’ (‘Foreign Bull’, 2002); ‘The Warrior, The Healer, The Feeder, and ‘Refugee Only’ (2003); ‘Peranakan Shelters’ (2004); ‘Shelter Me’ (series I ‘ IV, 2005); ‘This Place is Mine’ (2006); ‘(Wo)man of Quality’ (2007); ‘Shaggy’ (2008) and the most recent,‘Zipper Zone’ and ‘Square Body – Kanda Empat’ (2009). These works have been exhibited widely in various exhibitions, both national and international, in a variety of contexts and curatorial themes. It is not rare that these works are presented in art exhibitions of wearable art or events that spotlight the meeting point between art and contemporary fashion.
In every exhibition, Mella’s costumes are worn by models who become integral parts of the works. With the presence of the models these works become actual, as well as functional. It is her intention to create unexpected special situations with the presence of the models and their coverings to stimulate the responses and the vision of the audience.
The exhibition ‘Fitting Room’ presents a comprehensive picture of Mella Jaarsma’s artistic journey of 25 years of living and working in Indonesia. In addition to presenting most of the works that use costumes as an idiom, this exhibition also presents several other installations, such as ‘Rubber Time II’ (2003) and ‘My Name is Michaella Jarawiri’ (2007). These two works are still closely related to the essential issue of body coverings. Special notes must be given to’ My Name is Michaella Jarawiri, because this is an experimental work that presents the complex relationship between cultural symbols, taboos, religion, fiction, concepts about nation, surveillance practice, and fitting rooms (in its original meaning) in a provocative manner. This work resulted from Mella’s trip and research in West Papua that produced unexpected public interaction when it was first exhibited in a biennale in Yogyakarta, where Mella invited the male visitors to experience wearing kotekas of various shapes and to find the size and model of koteka that was suitable for their own penis. I am sure that the presentation in a different context of space and time will produce a different interaction.’ Michaella Jarawiri’ is an imaginary artist who became Mella’s collaborator in this work.
Mella’s most recent work in this exhibition, ‘Square Body – Kanda Empat’ , presents the interesting relationship between the exploration of the idiom of costumes with the issue that first brought Mella to Indonesia, that is, shadows. In the mid-1980s, much of Mella’s artistic inspirations came from the visualization of shadows, from wayang kulit performances to the shadows of objects and humans that were produced by the tropical sun. In the work, ‘Square Body – Kanda Empat,’ a model wearing a costume creates the visualization of shadows.
For me, ‘Square Body – Kanda Empat’ reflects a further exploration of the concept of body coverings and the images that result from it. If in Mella’s previous works the image of a covering was produced by tangible material, in this work, the image is determined by light. I found an interesting connection between the concept of body, covering and shadow in the treasury of Javanese wayang kulit philosophy. In wayang kulit, the shadows on the screen represent the body, which is, by nature, transitory. We can understand this perspective if we are aware that shadows are by nature fleeting, dependent upon the intensity of the light present. Meanwhile, the wayang itself is a symbol of authenticity, the eternal soul of humanity (because of this, the wayang puppets are always colored, even though only the shadows are shown). If we use this perspective in viewing’ Square Body – Kanda Empat,’ at a certain point, our concept of coverings will shift from the material to the immaterial, and vice versa.
Mella’s works cannot be separated from broader discussions about society, community and visual culture. Mella’s artistic ideas, in general, almost always touch upon problems concerning the relationship between the ‘individual’ and the ‘social’. Upon examination, Mella’s artistic practice is formed by a thought process that has many layers. Her works repudiate a connection between reality and language, which in daily life undergoes simplification by becoming artificial stereotypes. Mella’s works generally do not only speak of symbols, but also of the structures that form the symbols, and the status of the symbols in social life. This reminds me of the artists’ conceptual creed of the 1960s that questioned aspects of political language, instead of just producing meanings with language itself.
Agung Hujatnikajennong
Curator of exhibition ‘The Fitting Room’, 2009
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References:
1.’ Bambang Sugiharto,’ Penjara Jiwa, Mesin Hasrat, Tubuh Sepanjang Budaya, in’ Jurnal Kebudayaan Kalam’ No. 15, p. 26 ‘ 42. Yayasan Kalam, 2000. 2. Michael Rustin,’ Psychoanalisis, Racism and Anti-racism, in’ Identity: A Reader, Paul Du Gay (ed., et al), Sage Publication, 2000 3. Tony Godfrey,’ Conceptual Art, Phaidon Press, 1998.