a moment at selasar
…“Tom, Eric, as you might already know, 1998 was a significant year for Indonesia, for our nation dropped (or maybe rose) to the ground zero. He named it “titik nadir”, coordinate zero point zero. As Sunaryo himself empathized with the ‘dark’ social and economic situation at that moment, he couldn’t let any color or beauty to be exposed. Therefore, he showed his deepest empathy by covering all of his works with total black fabrics. Eventually one by one the paintings and sculptures were uncovered, until in year 2000 all of his works could be seen again. Colors, scratch, and shapes are appreciated again.So did this tall wall, gentlemen, in 1998 it was all covered with a piece of black fabric. All but this small gap that formed like a thin entrance. There we know that he’s not a pessimistic person somehow. He still believed that even when you are on your long way of darkness and you thought that big black wall blocks your way, there’s still a way out, maybe it is not wide and you have to turn your body aside to enter that, but you’d do that, won’t you?And if you have passed through it, right in front of you is the small masque we call ‘musholla’. There you know that this entire path you’ve been through is actually and undoubtedly headed to Him. There you know that after all you’ve been trough, after so many darkness and depressing moment you had, you finally find the ultimate power, the ultimate love, which keeps saving your life. Through this ‘hole’ we find that whatever happen to our lives, He has, or maybe: He is, the answer we seek all trough our lives.”The tour at Selasar Sunaryo was a great (although sometimes depressing) experience for four of us. Tom, Eric, Indri, and I were so fascinated by his works and of course by his sensitivity of social condition. He persuaded us to think others through the marble-sand (there must be a technical term for that, I don’t know what it is), he criticized the government through acrylic, he spoke the life through stones and water, he let his works speak and finally I was moved to be a total human (again).That wall was not the only thing that astonished us. Especially his 2006 work about Lapindo’s mud made my tears dropped. However I couldn’t write them all here. We had about 3 hours touring plus 2 hours and half discussing them there at the café. The wall was only 3 minute of it. So you’ll be bored if I write all of his works here. However, I am not in the capacity of talking about art and making meaning of it anyway J.
What I want to say is only one sentence: I love to have them as my friends and I thank Allah for making the day for me to be with them.
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