Bahasa Mella Jaarsma
Mella Jaarsma has been active in the Indonesian contemporary art scene since the 1980s. She is renowned for her series of striking sculptural costumes, featured in installations and performances, which act as ‘second skins’ or ‘shelters’ to show the significance of the body in shaping our identity and relationships to community, place and history. The wearable sculptures often emphasise cultural prejudices and political injustices in society regarding race, ethnicity and religion.
The landscaper 2013 is a two-part work comprising a costume and single-channel video. Jaarsma takes inspiration from the billowing skirts worn by Sufis, and the ritual dance of Sufi whirling, to invoke parallel histories of beauty and violence in the Dutch colonial project of ‘landscaping’ Indonesia. In the video, a lone Sufi dancer appears atop a cliff, overlooking the tranquil waters of a seaside town. He is a striking presence in this otherwise unpeopled natural landscape. In place of his traditional flowing skirt, he wears a tiered hoop skirt made from a collection of kitsch landscape paintings. A bell begins to chime and the dancer starts to spin in repetitive circles, as if in rhythmic meditation. As he spins, the camera zooms in on the painted landscapes displayed on his whirling body, and we watch them blur into the surrounding environment. The dancer responds to the quickening bell sounds until, finally, he collapses.
The landscaper was inspired by Jaarsma’s residency in the rural setting of the Jatiwangi Art Factory in West Java. Local artists collaborated with Jaarsma to create the skirt architecture with its 34 interlinked wooden panels, carved by Pengho and painted by Anex, each depicting a romanticised idyllic landscape in the famed Mooi Indië (Beautiful Indies) colonial painting tradition introduced to the Dutch East Indies in the early twentieth century. The imagery for Jaarsma’s skirt panels was inspired by both the beautiful landscapes surrounding Jatiwangi and the enduring local presence of Mooi Indië paintings in everyday life.
These scenes of natural beauty and peaceful existence are in stark contrast to the region’s colonial history of violence and cruelty. Passing through Jatiwangi is the Great Post Road, the 1000-kilometre-long road spanning Java. Constructed in 1808 by exploited local Javanese people forced into unpaid labour, the undertaking resulted in countless deaths. Ironically, Mooi Indië landscapes decorate the becaks (cycle rickshaws) that operate on the road today. As exotic tourist advertisements, they perpetuate the myth of an untouched landscape.
Dr Michelle Antoinette
