Adi Wicaksono

The Wounding Blockade

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To stand before Teguh Ostenrik’s sculptures and paintings from his deFACEment collection is to witness a set of figures or forms reassembling into human’s shapes and faces. These are not the realistic human figures, but abstractions of body and face. They are abstractions on account of their reference to representational art, which exploits every possibility within the seen world. Unlike abstract forms, which are inclined to liberate themselves or go beyond shapeless interior forces.

Most of Teguh’s sculptures take the shapes of human body and face, animals or things. They reflect like a mirror the spectator’s feelings, moods or the atmosphere in h/her surround. His paintings, however, present human faces enlivened with vivid expressions. While the sculptures are made of hard, rigid, rough and corroded scraps, his paintings are transparent and layered with various simple levels of illustration.

 

The scraps are transmuted into foreign yet familiar shapes. They may look a bit terrifying at first. People usually perceive the body as a form of human existence while the face a space, a window into the depths of humanity. But when I gaze into Teguh’s statues, I find it difficult to recognize myself. I cannot make myself admit that I am what the statues illustrate. His representations of my self and the others become cold, hard and inhuman. I vaguely feel discomfited by the shapes of those figures and faces.

His use of scraps makes a serious impact. I am disenfranchised to see the face and body for what they’ve become: estranged and menacing. (The statues would make completely different impressions if made of materials from wood, resin or gypsum). The corroded metal has forced me to redefine my relationship with “the Other”. Indeed, “the Other” comes not from a faraway place but from a part within me: my and other people’s body and face. They have become harsh and dangerous, just like a corroded piece of metal.

How could this happen? How could something familiar turn into something alien? How should I react toward these estranged and strange things?

Such questions are what I believe as belonging to the cognitive problem, which often occurs when one needs to determine one’s personal standpoint among many other impersonal ones. Our personal standpoint is the result of individual contemplation that is unique, partial and related to the subject’s experiences, while the impersonal point of view is a way of seeing an object from the axis of external standpoints.

Impersonal point of view approaches the unknown Other, whatever form it may take, not as an inherent part of my existence and therefore may cause conflicts or anxieties. The unknown Other is beyond reach. While I can’t capture its form, I can feel its implications on my behavior. People want to get to know and understand the unknown Other with reduced risks. To watch and distance oneself from the unknown Other is one risk-free way to do that. But that is not by mutual cognition. Impersonal approach is a shortcut to summarize the unknown Other into a particular category that will help the subject form h/her perception.

At first, the Other is defined within the social and cultural framework. The available definitions, categories and classifications are so easy to understand that people recognize without difficulty the borders between the conventional and the unconventional, the normal and the abnormal. I as the subject am the first standpoint whereas the Other is not and cannot be myself. There is no comprehensive identification of the object beyond my perception.

Another person is just a person to me. “(S)he” or “they” are parts of something created by their own borders. You, (s)he or they are first identified through a part of the Other, a part that may be defined as the man, the rich, the Moslem, the Chinese, the Malay, the Negro or the Javanese. The other is a part of an entity, group, or a bundle of things: clothes, hair, language, profession, religion, race and so on. And often I see my face in a mirror and I see impersonal facades, with no personal dimensions.

Surely, within the impersonal lie forces that can really touch me. Impersonality is easily recognizable. If the Other cannot be recognized then I will become anxious. I may be provoked to forget those impersonal forces or feel threatened by their physical forms. To me, awfully deformed shapes that transgress conventions and definitions of normality become threats. I cannot imagine accepting a child with one eye, hands that look like branches, head covered with stinking gunk, or stomach full of lesions, who walks like a lizard. Her mother would probably feel ashamed to show her to her friends and neighbors.

Children love to mock retards. Parents, somewhere in Java, bind and lock their crazy child and deny him social life. Physical disability is a sin. Some (straight) men feel uncomfortable or even disgusted when seeing homosexuals. My hand is afraid to shake the hands of lepers or people with AIDS. During the New Order regime in Indonesia, people were inclined to avoid those alleged as ex-members of PKI, who eventually came out of prison as if they were condemned abominable creatures.

Abnormality initiates fear that leads to exclusions. Although the Other may be physically a normal human being, he or she bears a stigma. The Other may also be disgusting and dangerous animals, like snakes. They are not deformed but they are menacing. I do not perceive snakes, scorpions or crocodiles as personal. Snakes are impersonal. The most natural reaction when one is put face to face with such creatures is to attack or avoid their attacks, which is a personal action against something impersonal.

Such negativity is then perceived as a normal symptom of xenophobia or the fear of others, which would not occur without negative social experiences coalescing into collective memory. These stacks of memory are like time bombs, ready to explode any time. In May 1998, Jakarta saw ten or maybe hundreds of thousands (indigenous) people attacked, looted and burned down buildings; chased, raped and killed Chinese citizens. In Kalimantan, the Dayaks and the Madurese were brutally killing each other. Now, Ambon and Poso still reek of blood.

It is very easy to make a list of the pogroms in Indonesia. Yet, it is not easy for people to understand and define xenophobia although they can easily do things beyond imaginations or common definitions. Xenophobia becomes latent and can anytime manifest without minding social preferences, politics and such. Sometimes it is like random hysteria or wild forces that are not commanded by a certain ideology. Such constant xenophobia is silently internalized and personalized. In Indonesia, one religious group may easily condemn another although they share the same doctrine. One sect emerges and is attacked by another. Some are killed while some seek redemption. The rest form another sect and devise an equally brutal act of vengeance.

In Indonesia, people quietly accept segregations, fragmentations, separations and conflicts caused by xenophobia as a given. Disputes, which may lead to violence, between various social, political, cultural, religious and racial groups occur at an appalling rate. One group imposes its truth upon another and the other group isolates itself and chooses to be an exclusive entity. Social fragmentation has never been as acute as it is now while politics, in many ways, only makes things worse and triggers even more conflicts rather than settles them.

However, I should add, social confrontations often do not have any political ground. Violence happens over trivial matters and becomes contagious. It becomes harder and harder for me and for us to trust you and them. Social and personal affinities dissipate. Skepticism toward others has created a sort of barricade between groups and individuals. Impersonality has become a sharp and spiteful rock.

***

That is a context we can use to comprehend Teguh’s decision to use scraps as material for his statues. It seems that, through the scraps, Teguh wishes to portray those particular moments when human beings are faced with a solid blockade preventing them from getting to know one another. In a situation such as that, once again, I and the Other become impersonal. The Other is real and tangible but cannot be comprehended. Or to be more precise, I am not able to understand because I am trapped in a firm and rigid impersonality. Not only that the other transmutes into something that is impersonal, I as a personal being is also pulled into the act of exclusion. I have become the Other, a foreign being. Human face and body have become inanimate.

 

As a result, I’ve lost a window into the depths of my and other people’s humanity. I no longer have the power to cognize the Other as a person, especially when the process itself is a product of incessant violence taking place not only in Indonesia but also in many parts of the world. Unique, pure and sincere personality is nearly destroyed by the brutally addictive xenophobia. It is difficult to find delicate and peaceful humanity.

The demise of human skills in recognizing themselves is apparent in Teguh’s work “Bercermin”, which reveals an undone and unmoving figure. Looking into a mirror is a personal activity of searching for substance within form; a process of penetrating the body’s impersonality to arrive at an abstraction of the body as a person. Yet, when all we see is naked and rigid scraps, all we find are parts of human body that are incomplete and similar to spiteful shingles.

Inside the mirror we find unfinished objects, just like cold, stiff and numb traces of humanity: humans as shapes made up of slices and chunks of things, surrounded by impersonal forces we recognize as worthless and its body black and blue with the curse of never-ending violence. You may be shocked when you read in the news that one man kills another for a pack of cigarettes or a bottle of beer; husband burns wife because she forgets to make him coffee; an elderly woman strangles her grandson because he whines all the time. These horrific deeds occur in Jakarta, Indonesia.

A disgrace. We can no longer recognize humans in their typical forms. The relationships between husbands and wives, grandmothers and grandchildren, are as impersonal as the ones between inanimate objects or animals and their enemies. Interrelations become fragile and frightening because they are not based on insight and attachment. Impulsive reactions hinder comprehensive recognition. Things are separated and disconnected.

In other words, our world is displayed as conflicting and hostile fragments. In the case of the old woman, although her deed in strangling her grandson is totally unacceptable, we cannot just dismiss it. Such antagonism happens time after time with no clear and sensible reasons that people categorize it as an anomaly. However, because it has happened over and over again, people are no longer troubled and they may even accept it as common in everyday life.

This is bad news because we look at ourselves and the others within that kind of antagonism. It is impossible for us to perceive human beings in their final forms but here we are forced to continuously look to validate whether what we see is an illusion, made of unrecognizable pieces, or something that is natural and a familiar part of ourselves. “Bercermin” entails a repetitive process of reconstructing pieces of ourselves and unveiling the hidden layers within us. Such repetition is required because what we desire to recognize is not in its ultimate form. And in spite of the repetitions, we do not always succeed in discovering our complete selves.

In a world full of antagonism, what we often find may be one like “Simply Body”. Within the piece, we find what is human as a mute and stiff body: a state when the soul is removed from the body, empty. It is drained by spontaneous force and desire. The human body suffers and is abandoned like useless scraps, lying in a storehouse full of rotten things.

That is a portrayal of us today: lifeless human beings made of unfinished and incomplete pieces. If we dig deeper, this fragmented image has appeared together with the fractures in our modern lifestyles caused by contradictions and antagonisms in the course of finding a realm that is built upon individuality. The effort to mend the rupture and the unanimity has never ended. Modernity that gives birth to humans as a whole and the autonomous subject is now alienating and destroying that very subject.

Teguh’s sculptures demand us to admit that hollowness and uncertainty are everywhere. Estrangement, fragmentation and suffering are parts of humanity. Violence and negativity come from every direction. Personality is ruled by impersonality.

So, what should we do? Should we still perceive humans as persons instead of scraps? Teguh’s other statues ask us to believe that humans are products of a long process that does not happen to animals or inanimate things. Humans have names: Halimah, Hamidah, Harumi, Hayatun, Hanim, Haneefa, Hasnah, and so on. (These names are the titles of Teguh’s statues). Names turn bodies and faces into persons. They are no longer a category, crowd, or things; they are individuals.

By accepting human beings as personal creatures, we may acknowledge people according to their names, Haifa, Hafthah, Hayam, Richard, Ismail, Abdullah or Siti, instead of attributes such as a Moslem, a Christian, a Malay or a Javanese. Intense connection allows us to perceive others as we do ourselves when looking into a mirror and understand instead of just see and recognize. Through understanding, we enter our own and other people’s personality. Bodies and faces become the space where I can understand others as persons and myself as an individual.

Teguh’s human names series bears a very important role: a bridge that allows us to leave impersonality and embrace our personality. One day I was on a jam-packed train and to me the other passengers were just another crowd. Their faces were like stones, inhibited to the world. I felt inhibited too because I was afraid to look directly at them. I was afraid to smile and resisted from striking a conversation with any of them for I was not sure how they would react. I suspected their reactions would have unpleasant impressions on me.

Then somebody accidentally pushed me. He quickly apologized and smiled. I smiled back and realized the blockade had vanished. A simple “sorry” had lifted the veil that was wrapped around us and allowed us to communicate. Both he and I were relieved. We shook hands and introduced ourselves. He told me his name was Sunarto. From the look on his face and the build of his body, I presumed he was a laborer. His life must be a lot harder than mine. His face looked like putrefied metal covered in oil.

A smile, an apology and a simple touch could turn out to be very significant in tearing down the blockade. The body and the face were not only an impersonal construction but also an outline of the whole personality. Physical touch is a form of direct communication, which may affect the rest of the identification process. That first touch changed what had seemed to me like a crowd of insignificant things into somebody like Sunarto. Now I recognized the passengers as personalities.

I had a frightening experience in May 1998 when I saw a lot of people in a rampage, looting and burning down buildings on the streets of Jakarta. Their faces shone like devils amidst trails of smokes. (I see Teguh’s works resemble the bodies and faces of people who were burnt at the time). Perhaps Halimah, Hanan, Hasnah, Haifa, or Mei Lin was gang-raped to death. Perhaps their rapists did not know who they were as they only valued their victims’ impersonal values. They did not see Mei Lin as a person; they saw her as merely Chinese.

I wonder if the rapist and his victim know each other by name, will brutal rapes and murders still happen? Maybe yes, maybe no. Will it really make a difference if they know one another personally?

I would not know. What I do know is that Teguh’s names series have informed me to evoke my personal forces when caught in the midst of impersonal threats. The names are key to my understanding of his other statues’ figures and faces. They are key to tearing down the blockade between me and other people. Ultimately, I can invite other people into my own self.

Mutual identification comforted me and brought a smile to my face, as portrayed by the statue “I hope I have invited”. Across the bridge, the world seems more exciting. Those who are on the other side and those who are on my side now appear more alive, moving further and closer, like the statue “I see sunflower in your face”. Indeed, humans are prone to pain but they are also familiar with sadness, hopelessness, longing and joy. Mixed, these feelings creep up on me. And if I feel them altogether when I see someone, I will find that particular being as stimulating as the statue “Wanna tango with you”.

At that moment, I discovered another side of myself. I became the person who was connecting with another person. I felt light yet full of passion, just like when my train arrived at a station. I got off from the train and walked past a bus stop. Many people were sitting down or standing up under the blazing sun. Their faces were covered with sweat and dusts from the streets. I did not see them as unfamiliar or foreign. I did not feel threatened. I recognized those faces very well.

***

Those are a few things we can pick up from Teguh’s struggle with corroded scraps. We can easily find such material in warehouses or from the things we use everyday. The use of old or ordinary things is not something that has never been done in the arts. What makes works produced with such material unique is the way they capture the material’s character. Viewers may still recognize its original state and its original function because it is not entirely molded into a different form.

 

Before the material was made into art, it had a context and history that were related to its functionality. A frying pan or a cogwheel has a functional value to its users. The material can only be understood based on its previous function. But its value and function are now extracted into a wider context: the specific is transferred into the universal. Metal scraps that did not have meaning beyond their functional value are now transformed into a different form with an entirely new meaning.

Teguh’s works were rendered more distinctive by the rusts. Abstractions of human figures and faces are not produced from the artist’s pure imagination but bound to the material’s form and character. Humans are not the creations of the Great Creator; humans are created from the useless, trivial and abandoned. Humans and their body can be fabricated from things. Humans are creatures that are damaged and decaying.

Teguh’s statues invite us to recognize humans that have been transformed into a profane and useless thing. Teguh shows us that humans have experienced massive degradation; encourages us to admit that humans, instead of creatures born in paradise, are in fact morsels scattered in a decrepit world. Humans are a thrash collector, collecting human leftovers. And what we get are humans in its foreign forms, as the Other and the unfamiliar.

As I have said earlier, Teguh invites us to resuscitate the dead, rigid, foreign and unfamiliar humanity so that we could be human beings that are alive and have personalities. Only through in-depth identification process can we surpass the tough impersonality and finally find humans that are truly alive. Yet, as I have also said, in-depth identification has to be done over and over.

This is obvious in Teguh’s works. We can find layers of human faces, like ruptures of movements. The faces keep changing in a steady rhythm. Portrayed in a particular moment amidst irregular movements and expressions. We are expected to constantly capture the changes, observe every detail: one image (or perhaps, shadow) on top of another of another and so forth.

It is not only an attempt to recognize oneself in front of a mirror or of others within a short period, but to capture one important moment after the other, a never-ending process. The artist paints a portrait of himself to prevent lifeless identification: humans are not definite. We may find many similar faces here but they are never truly the same for they were created in separate moments. Humans and their faces are always in progress.

The layers that appear in Teguh’s paintings illustrate the attempts to reveal humans as a layered and progressive person. The piles of transparent screens form a detailed image of every layer of human development. We and other people may always change but behind that change lays a particular pattern: sadness, hopelessness, fear, anxiety, optimism, happiness and joy.

That is why Teguh keeps on painting human faces in the same pattern. Sometimes, it seems as if he does not know how to stop. He keeps on inquiring: what can be found in the faces of those who roam the streets, office buildings, stations, trains, supermarkets or those who lie in beds? There are so many expressions. Every time we look into their faces, we ask if they are happy, what they have been through, how they handle their pain, and so on.

But one thing has to be made clear: in-depth identification is less about acquiring the ultimate and definite imaging than the on-going process itself. The beauty of in-depth identification lies not on the ambition to gain finality but the moments that reveal the ever- changing layers. This is what Teguh did on his human faces series. We would, at times, not be able to differentiate the faces on his paintings with our own. Is it a painting of a man, a woman, a Chinese, an Arab, a Javanese or a ghost? Is it a sequel of another? Where does the chain end?

Teguh does not want us to stop at only one point. He wants us to keep moving forward in our movement so we shall be able to capture precious moments, still time, and then move into and capture another moment. Then, we can reveal the layers within us and the others.

We will also be creating intimate spaces for us and other people. In certain moments, I am not different than you, him or her, or them. You and I become us. In this cool and fresh room, between yellowish green bodies, we talk to each other. We may only be playing with words like children, when dreadful memories crash and create circles on the water surface, when the last of the walls falls down. Here we stay very close to one another, among coal and cinders, threads and chalks, pot and wind, a dead well and its diggers. I get a pleasant whiff of your face and I am not aware of death walking away. Our time is a reversed mirror; it ends sooner than the crack of dawn.

Hence, let’s get to know each other. Let’s open up. Let’s enter into ourselves and the others. Let’s get intimate.

Let’s be happy, my friend.

Translated by Gratiagusti Chananya Rompas.

Friday, April 11th, 2008 at 10:54 am and is filed under SENI RUPA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.