Museum MACAN first sight putting injusticeinto the spotlight
A. KURNIAWAN ULUNGTHE JAKARTA POST

Jakarta | Tue, September 26, 2017 | 10:44 am
Arahmaiani, one of Indonesia’s most seminal and respected contemporary artists, was silent
when asked to compare the country’s problems before and after the fall of the authoritarian New
Order regime in 1998.
Until today, she still feels the pain of when she was forced to drop out of the Bandung Instituteof Technology as a consequence of her poem about a just life, which was misunderstood as achallenge to the second president, Soeharto.
In 1983, she was arrested and interrogated for over a month. “I was brought to a place named
Sumatra 37. In the Soeharto era, everyone who was sent to Sumatra 37 usually went missing,”
she said.
“I was freed after signing a letter stating that I was mentally unhealthy,” the 56-year-old added
while laughing.
After Soeharto stepped down, freedom of expression was allowed, yet injustices still prevail in
different forms. This has recently been manifested in cases of religious intolerance, such as therecent demand for the demolition of religious statues, including a statue of the God of War
Kongco Kwan Sing Tee Koen at the Kwan Sing Bio Chinese temple in Tuban, East Java.
“[In West Nusa Tenggara] they even disputed the statues which exist under the sea, that are notvisible [from above],” she said.
Arahmaiani cannot be silenced. During the 2nd First Sight program at the Museum of Modernand Contemporary Art in Nusantara (Museum MACAN), she performed Handle without Care tohighlight instances of injustice, including religious intolerance.
At Indonesia’s first world-class modern and contemporary museum, five other artists alsoparticipated. They were Duto Hardono and Mella Jaarsma from Indonesia, Xu Zhen from China,Justin Shoulder from Australia and Heman Chong from Singapore.
Previously performed in New York in 2008, Handle without Care is one of Arahmaiani’s mostimportant works. She has held 21 solo exhibitions and has taken part in 96 group exhibitions
around the world since 1980.
Handle without Care begins with Arahmaiani walking slowly while holding incense, with a pair ofsunglasses inserted on her kemben (breast cloth), and a toy gun and traffic stick tucked into herwaist.
Clad in a yellow Balinese dress, she heads to a flour-covered circle with her kris at the edge ofthe circle and a Coca-Cola bottle in the center.

After arriving, she walks around the circle many times while performing different actions, ranging
from dancing, sowing flowers, swinging her kris, playing with her traffic stick to shooting theCoca-Cola bottle with her toy gun.
According to Arahmaiani, the Coca-Cola bottle is the symbol of capitalism, which she says is anunfair economic system that benefits rich people while destroying local culture and theenvironment. Meanwhile, the white flour, which is the ingredient of instant noodles, representsconsumerism.
“Now, you can see that floods and landslides happen everywhere,” she said.
She walks outside the circle to represent marginalized people, who she says are the victims ofcapitalism. She uses the toy gun to symbolize non-violent methods, in which to encourage
people to stop committing violence with things that they disagree with in life.
Promoting peace is a long-lasting mission of Arahmaiani, who recently professed mixed feelingof anger and sadness after a man was burned to death by a mob after being accused of stealing
three amplifiers from a mosque in Bekasi, West Java.
“Even if he was truly stealing, did he deserve to be burned? How much is those amplifiers,” sheasked, questioning the mob’s conscience.
During her show, she alternately recites sacred utterance in Hinduism and Buddhism, Orthodox
Christian prayers and Quranic verses in a bid to show the harmony of diverse religions andfaiths in Indonesia.
Like Arahmaiani, Mella Jaarsma also spoke up regarding injustice through her
performance, Dogwalk.
The Yogyakarta-based artist criticized injustices caused by power relations, which she observed
existed not only among fellow human beings, but also among animals, and in the relations
between humans and animals.
Wearing costumes made of cowhide, lambskin and goatskin, 12 people pretended to be cows,lambs and goats. They performed with red leashes that connected to one another.
“Those skins come from animals who were sacrificed during Idul Adha [Day of Sacrifice],” shesaid.
The lashes, she said, were the symbol of power used by humans to control one another oranimals.
“This is about a human’s perceptions of animals. [Due to those perceptions] there are animals
that can be killed, animals that are considered sacred, and animals that can be protected, etc. It
is always humans who makes the rules.”“Why do we love a certain animal, but hate another? This animal is holy, but another is not.
Dogs, for example. That’s hypocrisy,” she added.
In his performance Carrion: Episode 1, Justin Shoulder played Carrion, an imaginary figure
portraying his ancestral Filipino culture.
Made of handcrafted costumes and prostheses, Carrion has the ability to shapeshift into
multiple forms and speak multiple languages

Through the actions of Carrion, Shoulder criticizes the condition when laws of nature rapidlychange due to the destructive influence of humans.
Carrion: Episode 1, which contains nudity, strobe and smoke effects, draws on queer andbicultural ancestral mythologies with an aim to transport the audience into a place where thedistant past collides with the far future.
Before opening its doors to the public on Nov. 4, Museum MACAN held art performances
because they had the potential to encourage artists and their audiences to communicate ideas
in a very direct way, according to Aaron Seeto, the Australian director of the museum.
“Art performance is an integral part of the development of contemporary art here in Indonesia
and elsewhere,” he said. “Especially here in Indonesia, which is multicultural and multi-religious,
art allows us to be tolerant.”
Founded by businessman and renowned collector Haryanto Adikoesoemo, Museum MACAN ishome to over 800 works of modern and contemporary art. Around 50 percent of them are fromIndonesia, 25 percent from the United States and Europe and 25 percent from the greater Asianregion.
“This museum is about Indonesian culture, but we want to be an important bridge between
Indonesia and the world,” he said.