FX Harsono: Testimonies at the Singapore Art Museum was a retrospective tribute to this senior artist in the development and redefinition of contemporary art within Indonesia. The exhibition presented the artist’s observations and involvement in Indonesian political discourse and the stylistic shifts that took place in his work between 1975-2009. Eighteen artworks were on display ranging from the first conceptual attempts of the early 70’s, to the politically charged installations of the 1990’s and current use of diverse media to address more self-reflective issues of race, self and identity. In these 4 decades of practice, FX Harsono who was born in 1948, in Java and is of Chinese descent, has persevered in questioning his role as an artist and his position in society, constantly pushing his art to reflect evolving social contexts.

The historical atmosphere the curatorial team tried to evoke throughout the show was visible in their installation choices. Divided into two sections, the artworks in the left wing responded to the repressive and authoritarian years of Suharto’s New Order era (1965-1998). They ranged from early conceptual endeavours through to the highly political pieces of the late 90’s. Harsono’s practice and the Indonesian political situation changed in 1998, and the curators decided to validate this transition in the right wing of the show. More autobiographical and self reflective, these works witnessed the change from the New Order to the Era Reformasi (Reformation Era), a period of greater freedom of expression and individualism. Here the artist concentrates his gaze on his role within society and on his almost lost identity during the New Order years.

Paling Top ’75

In this visual journey viewers are able to see three specific changes in style or three pivotal moments for the development of social awareness and freedom of speech, a questioning of artistic canons and a breakthrough passage from passive modernity to an active contemporary representation and introspective analysis of individuality. The exhibition begins with the encounter of the first of these three phases, a chapter characterized by conceptual exploitations and experimentations in new forms of art. It is an era that culminated in the creation of Gerakan Seni Rupa Baru (The New Art Movement, 1975-1980) a group of major figures in the arts that included FX Harsono, Jim Supangkat, Nanik Mirna and art critic Sanento Yumiliman. The aim of the movement was to challenge, through art practices, the conservatism of the Indonesian Arts Academy’s methodological and aesthetical teachings of conventional modern painting and sculpture.

Paling Top ’75 (The most top ‘75) is an example of the Gerakan Seni Rupa Baru’s employment of alternative media and new approaches to the theories and creation of art. Moving away from the hierarchy of painting and sculpture, Harsono started to explore the realm of Duchampian ready mades. By utilizing a toy gun, the artist was challenging not only traditional institutions but also the notions of art and its role within society. He was trying to create artworks that could relate to local experiences. In PalingTop ’75, the experience that Harsono is referring to, is the de-politicization that the Suharto regime, during the New Order Era, was requesting for all the artistic expressions. In front of the viewer is a gun, with the power for violence, but it is trapped in a wooden crate, wired as if in a prison cell. There seems to be a possible association of this weapon with artists, confined to express their power because of a perceived threat to the establishment. At the same time the gun, being a toy replica, is a teasing allusion to the same power that the Suharto regime presumed to have. Ultimately what Harsono is presenting us is a deliberate masquerade of power shown in all its surreal connotations and paradoxical implications. It is a call to action for art, a need to engage with politics in order to promote changes in society.

Power and the Oppressed

The next stop in this visual voyage is in a central and highly evocative piece namely Power and the Oppressed. Designed for the room at the back of left wing, this 1992 installation still has the power to awaken the terror of those years. In an impeccable, quasi-ascetical white room an empty chair waits. Protected in its austerity, it is surrounded by barbed wire. A grid-like display of piles of soil faces this deposed throne. In each of these fifteen piles there is a piece of white cloth, each coloured at the centre with red pigment. On top of the piles, a few branches are placed as if they were about to beat the drum.

Power and the oppressed (detail)

This dual confrontation of power versus oppression is charged by heaviness in both the atmosphere and the allegation that they imply. An unstable atmosphere is created by the grid, which is then amplified by the unproduced sound that those “earthy drums” are likely to create. There is an edge of uncertainty played here, and this allure is even more intensified by the red stains that the beating of the “drums” generate. It is an order that is indeed painful, every time it is performed it leaves a trace, a scar. This area of the exhibition is loaded with deep and profound images, which incite considerations over disparity in authority and inequalities of rights. They are provocations for social commitment, critiques of status quo and fulfil their task of awareness for critical engagement. Therefore the viewer is awakened from his passive absorption and enabled to position himself as active participant in this fight for equality and freedom.

This sense of liberation is explored in the next and final section. It is a walk of rediscovered freedom that Harsono lost in those tremendous years. And it is a compelling freedom that after 1998 was spread throughout the country. Yet this new found liberty of expression was for many artists and Harsono in primis, was also a disorienting feeling, which presented a vacuum of targets. Art was no more a rebellious medium to use against oppression and could not serve the same social purposes. In this general artistic puzzlement Harsono was left even more vulnerable and defenceless then before. His only position was now to raise enquiries toward his own self and identity.

Thousand Times Pain

The body and its vacant detachment from the soul is the focus of this further development on the issue of identity. The way the artist explores this topic is by involving needles and pain as metaphors of subtle tortures that a lost identity can cause. Butterflies, bees and the artist’s own body became the subject of this new body of works, which display pain as a palpable and insidious overwhelming condition. The 2007 installation Thousand times pain is an ambiguous articulation of this paradigm. Thousands of bees are neatly organized in a grid, forcibly pinned to the wall. The agony they convey is increased by this immense progression of needles that symbolise pain. These suggest a feeling of despair and desolation, in which bees, symbols of defenseless victims, represent the nation’s loss of identity. Each bee can be indeed considered in its own singularity, but this individuality becomes irrelevant when it is amplified in a pattern of thousands of bees. Feeling lost in his own community, whom he once fought for, Harsono started to question the same community and peoples, not knowing anymore who they really were. Yet in this painful collectivization, victims and oppressors become alienated entities.

FX Harsono: Testimonies is a fundamental show in setting not only the canon for the evolvement of Southeast Asian art but also the model for a critical and cultural analysis of art in the region. In positioning itself at the core of this discussion, Singapore and its museums are portraying themselves as the stage to rouse and stimulate analytical questionings on how to define and look at the art from and within Southeast Asia. In choosing FX Harsono a witness of almost four decades of atrocities and injustices the curatorial team underline the significance of political and artistic criticality . Viewers are encouraged to undertake this subtle provocation and asked to reflect on their own environment while stimulated to advance further critical implications.

FX Harsono: Testimonies a retrospective of one of Indonesia’s leading contemporary artists was a collaborative exhibition between Indonesian curator Hendro Wiyanto, Singapore National Art Gallery assistant curator Seng Yu Jin and Singapore Art Museum curator Tan Siu Li. It was on display at The Singapore Art Museum from 4th of March till 9th of May.

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Arianna Gellini is a graduating student from Sotheby’s Institute in Singapore. She is an aspiring curator based in Hong Kong.