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01/03/2005: "A step outside the bubble"
I seem to be sliding into more slippery territory as I go along. I had prepared a text on the drawbacks totalitarian regimes have historically had on the development of the cultural dimension of those places where they occur. Having lived into my late teens in the shadows of a dictatorship I felt my insights were probably not that far off track. But were they called for, that was the question. Would they be of benefit to anyone or was it just another case of my ego wiggling through to proclaim to the world how interesting a life it had gone through? Surely I would not be making matters easier for myself and others by attracting unwanted attention to such subversive ideas. So I’ll keep it short and say simply that the enclave is governed by an Absolute Malay Islamic Monarchy whose origins can be traced back to the 15th century – a long unbroken line of tradition, intermarrying and other idiosyncrasies. A benign monarchy but absolute nonetheless with two extra layers of constraint just to be on the safe side. That should help put things into perspective.
In the previous blog I had taken you as far as my discovery of a public art gallery and an exhibition of paintings by a group of local artists, a handful of which had been selected to represent the enclave at the Asean Art awards in Bali. The time was April 02 and this was the first news of any significant cultural activity since I had arrived in July 01. The artists of the enclave kept playing hard to get so I decided [going against my nature] to thrust myself upon them. The idea came to me that perhaps outside of their usual environment they would open up and be more communicative. I remember that during the years of dictatorship in the shadow of which I grew up [most of the time at a safe distance due to my father’s job], the many artists, intellectuals and poets who visited our house outside the bubble would say things I never heard them repeat in Portugal. This is what set me on to the idea of travelling to Bali to meet the elusive artists of the enclave.
When we step outside our bubbles we become exposed to the opportunities that can lead us to see things from a different perspective. This is not an automatic acquisition: many people travel with heavy luggage and never leave home without their favourite filters of perception [I sometimes discover that I’ve tugged mine along even though I usually make a point of travelling light]. Bali was, first and foremost, a working trip. My state of mind was not one of vacation. I had prepared a schedule and realised soon enough that all the things I wanted to achieve within that week only made it tighter. My priority was to meet the artists, but I also had plans to visit art centres and galleries in the hope of making contacts for future collaborations. I rented a room in Ubud and drove down one afternoon to the resort area of Nusa Dua where the art awards were being presented at the International Convention Centre – an impressive sight. Uninvited, knowing only the date and the venue I decided to get there in the early hours of the afternoon and wait, feeling very much like a fish in somebody else’s aquarium. I knew my gesture had made some sort of a difference though the moment I saw Marsidi walk up towards me three hours later with a warm broad smile of surprise on his face.
[a room in ubud… with more than a view]
In that one week I gathered sufficient material to last me a year and on the topic of the enclave my effort turned out to be far more rewarding than I had expected it to be. After inspecting the works and mingling politely while I waited for the media circus to quiet down I hovered closer to the delegation from the enclave and Marsidi aptly introduced me to the lot. I congratulated the artists and met other members of the delegation headed by a former minister of culture and we discussed about a good number of topics which left me with a clearer picture of things in the bubble. Without getting too deep into the whys we spoke openly of what seemed to be lacking and what might be done in the field of artistic education and promotion to bring out the potential we felt was there [this seemed to be their greatest concern]. We spoke of isolation and I was made aware of the gap [tremendous gap] between the generations that had been educated in earlier years and those that matured under the smothering opulence of the latter half of the 20th century. I was eager to be told what fundamental trait of the enclave’s mentality could be driving them to not take full advantage of the conditions they presently enjoy and embark on projects [if not scientific or otherwise academic, at least artistic and cultural] that might leave references for future generations. But that would have been asking too much, I will have to look for the pieces of that jig-saw puzzle myself.
The most meaningful insight I managed to extract was concerning the work ethics of the artists of the enclave. All but Marsidi cannot afford to dedicate their lives to their art, the conditions for free independent artistic expression simply do not exist: there are no galleries because there is no demand for art, there is no demand because there is no appreciation or understanding, there is no understanding because the educational curriculum is lacking in many fundamental aspects and these pockets of ignorance have so far been overlooked because the absurd amount of wealth and the policy of protecting the bumi putera [the prince of the land – the malay Islamic subjects of his majesty] have rendered significant aspects of overall knowledge perfectly redundant in Malay schools. Marsidi has found his niche selling watercolours to the light flow of tourists who have started to trickle through the enclave on one day stopovers between Europe and Australia but the others all depend on their government jobs to support their families. Apart from Zakaria – by far the enclave’s most interesting and diligent artist - the only thing that moves the others is the ASEAN art awards and not because of the art but because of the prize money [someone later told me that if there is no prize money involved they will simply not be bothered]. Get the picture?
They were especially keen to hear what steps I had taken to become a professional artist given that I was self-taught as most of them were. I shared my experiences with them – the secrets, the pitfalls; the joys and the heartache… but mostly the hard work and the focus required daily to stay true to the vision and the project we set out to undertake – and we parted full of enthusiasm to get back together in the enclave and start work on some of the ideas we had talked about. We agreed to meet again at a private viewing of some of my paintings a German diplomat and friend had offered to stage at his home back in the enclave later in the month. Given the complete lack of response I had obtained thus far I felt as if I had just conquered Everest and everything was once again back on track. But the enclave is full of surprises. Its downward pull provides for unexpected twists. For the time being, however, happy with myself, I took a cab back to Ubud … it was well past midnight!
[‘… to die, to sleep – to sleep, perchance to dream – aye, there’s the rub…’]
Once we step outside our bubbles we change. In a certain sense we become more awake and life touches us with greater intensity. The question is whether we wish to acknowledge the change and take on the challenge of bringing about the necessary adaptation and move on... or whether we gradually decide to fall back to sleep. The hard work really begins when we return to our bubbles and face the turmoil the new ideas and experiences we harbour within us awaken in our being once confronted with the status quo we had left behind. The difficult bit is maintaining the freshness of the views we were afforded. The downward pull of human nature is in itself a tremendous force to overcome, if we add to that religious and ethnic parameters that tend to be overly conservative reflecting a fear of change and liberation we will come closer to understanding the pull this particular bubble I am speaking to you from exerts. A pull that completely annihilates the potential all the students and experts it sends forth into the world bring back with them when they return for their government jobs [could this be a piece of the puzzle?]
It was in Bali that the idea of setting up some sort of platform for the meeting of artists first came to me. I went ahead as planned with my visits of galleries and art centres but my thoughts and my priorities somehow shifted from my own personal pursuits to the prospect of initiating something new with the artists of the enclave. It was not a straightforward decision – I had made some connections with galleries from Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur [Taksu and Valentine Willie responded positively to my previous body of work and were keen to see where my present research lead me] and I had contemplated signing up for an artist residency at Agung Rai Museum of Art in Ubud – but the Bali Bombing and later Jakarta provided me sufficient reasons to concentrate on the enclave where things have always remained quiet. Somehow, from that moment on I felt a stronger sense of responsibility towards my new friends. What would have been the purpose of collecting exhibitions all over the place and not achieving anything of substance in the place where I was living? I realised, not without a sense of shock, that a fair amount of work was sure to come my way but I also knew that if I decided to avoid it I would be haunted by my lack of action, that the day would come when I would leave the enclave and carry with me a feeling of emptiness and of really having lived in a bubble. Four years wasted.
Once back in the enclave I had no trouble maintaining my focus and I completed a first series of impressions of Borneo [though still not a complete body of work] to show alongside some of my older India and water-series pieces. We agreed to keep things simple and unpretentious but encouraged as I was by the prospect of my new friends’ visit and aware of the likelihood that a few heavyweights from the financial, business and diplomatic circles would be present [thanks in great measure to my host’s intervention] I drafted a manifesto calling upon both sides – artists and those with more material influences – to join forces and work towards rearranging things in the enclave [harmlessly of course]. Some opportunities can simply not be overlooked. We still managed to keep things simple in that we did not read the manifesto but rather passed it on as a flier to the more interested guests… these in turn, upon reading it, sparked the interest of the others and thus well over 200 fliers went missing.
By which criteria might one judge the success or failure of an exhibition? By the number of visitors? By the volume of sales? By the reports in the media and the critical appraisal of the works? By the dynamics it generates and the future possibilities that ensue? I am easy to keep happy and I am not easily brought down to my knees. A hit, as insignificant as it may be, in any one of these departments is enough to keep me afloat. I have had shows where an avalanche of people came but no painting was sold, others where only few showed up but more than half the works on display were acquired or reserved on opening night and all were gone before the end of the show, and others still where hardly anybody came, the paintings almost ignored but I made it in to the newspapers and on to national television – the permutations don’t end here. I choose to see every single one of the exhibitions I have participated in as a success insofar as each one provides new experiences and knowledge that help me move on. Why then was I not feeling the same elation now? I had over 200 visits in the space of two days, I had sold 6 of 18 paintings – enough to keep me going – I had met a fair number of business tycoons and CEO’s who wanted to see more of my works privately and asked me to prepare a piece for a charity auction, and I had reasonable media coverage [there were two newspapers at the time… though, as you will guess, critical appraisal is a bit hard to come by in a country with no art critics]. The reason for my disappointment, as you no doubt will have guessed by now, was my failure to spot a single friend from my Balinese quest!
[schoolchildren waiting in the shade – their curiosity and appetite for knowledge not entirely fulfilled.]
If you thought we were going somewhere in this blog – if you thought this would be the blog in which I would finally reveal to you how the art forum was set up – I am afraid I will have to disappoint you. How can I put? These are times when information comes at lightning speed and we expect answers to our curiosity to come in a flash… we forget that the state of our being requires time to assimilate information and that excessive knowledge produces imbalance in Being: with so much information at our disposal one moment we dart off in the direction of objective a, the next we shift in the pursuit of b, and before we know it we are heading towards x,y and z without having achieved anything of note. No. I prefer to take you along at a slower pace. I want you to feel the frustration I felt on the roller-coaster rides of the enclave, I want you to get a sense of the time and effort it took to reach the goal we have achieved. Not because I want to brag about those achievements but because I want to share with you this knowledge that even in the most difficult of settings it is possible to create something worthwhile if we believe in the project and maintain our focus throughout. And no, I am not trying to spread my jam too thin. I am using the opportunity of theses blogs to try to make some sense of the turn my life and my career have taken since my wife applied for this new job that requires us to be away from home where (after 15 years of hard work) I had barely started to become visible. I want to share with you how I am fighting to maintain my focus on objective a even though at this distance I doubt anybody back home is paying the slightest attention or even gives a s…
The private viewing of my work in June 02 had a few positive repercussions on the greater project I had decided to undertake. Following the German Embassy’s successful event the Canadians organised a similar gig for a Canadian artist working as an art teacher in the enclave. Duane Nickerson and I had met some months before and got together at irregular intervals [school agenda was all consuming] to discuss artistic matters. His exhibition brought us closer and I shared with him the idea of setting up means for our coming together with artists of the enclave. A second, unexpected and very welcome, repercussion of the news of my exhibition [so I was told by the organizers] was a call for artists to join an exhibition led by a group of art teachers from an international school. It was at the first meeting of this new venture [we were no more than five] that I met Chinese-born Australian artist Shan Terry whose work completely swept me off my feet and convinced me of the validity of the project. Within a couple of months the group had expanded to 20 but still none of the artists of the enclave had come forth. I made further attempts to try to convince my friends to join us but they were hesitant and when the group voted to have the exhibition titled ‘Guests in… the enclave’ all hope evaporated: they couldn’t quite see how they could fit in and from that stage onwards I could no longer insist that they do. Allah had not willed it and I resigned to their fate.
[‘guests in… the enclave’ exhibition at museum gallery – nov.02]
In November tasks were distributed amongst the participants and I was put in charge of setting things up at the museum gallery. Our budget was just under $600, barely enough to cover gallery rental fees, invitations, a small catalogue and drinks on opening night. The way in which I went about setting up the exhibition was perhaps unorthodox and required more effort than usual but I was dead-set on pressing upon the participants the importance of being present throughout as much of the process as possible. Apart from Duane, Shan and myself there were only three other professional/full-time artists in the whole group, Amanda Malpas from Australia who was working full time on her appliquilts and Vijen Vijendren and Katy Hick who were teaching in local Malay schools. All the others were either amateur/hobby artists or first time enthusiasts with no previous exhibition experience. We could not be choosy however, these were the artists we had and we wanted to maximize the potential without turning anyone away [unless of course the quality was absolutely lacking… and we did refuse a few entries]. What I proposed was to turn the weekend into a workshop for the less familiar ones to learn from the more experienced artists how to go about setting up a successful exhibition. I had a final say on where exactly which paintings would be placed but the process that led to a final decision on my behalf was participative, not only from the artist in each instance but from others as well, especially those in neighbouring positions. I wanted to lead each participant to understand the reasons for the choices that were being made in each particular case so that they better understand the overall result. Each artist was then given his/her directives and Shan and Duane helped dilute my authority somewhat so I wouldn’t be seen as the bad guy. It was especially difficult to get the message across that this was a group exhibition of 20 artists and not 20 individual exhibitions within one showroom! There were moments of discord and tension but in the end we achieved a coherent exhibition revolving around the artists’ impressions of the enclave and I believe that they all recognised the benefits of having kept to two or three works each that stood out rather than cramming 10 or 15 into the same space with no room to breathe.
[‘guests in… the enclave’ exhibition with view of Shan Terry’s 3 charcoal pieces depicting the chinese dimension of the enclave]
On the opening night I readily stepped down from the curator’s pedestal and waited anxiously next to my own work for the first guests to arrive. Some found it odd that I should still feel nervous after exhibiting for almost 20 years, I on the other hand hope that I will always feel that same sensation in my stomach and openly show it till the very last exhibition this carcass of mine allows me to bring forth. Nothing gives me greater nausea than the sight of an artist putting up the jaded façade on an opening night – the ultimate contradiction in terms. Because this was not my exhibition, because it was very much due to the input of all the artists involved I will allow myself just this once to brag a little and say that the public was brought to its knees. The response was overwhelming, not only from the expatriate community, more accustomed to this type of event and avid for something uplifting to come their way more often, but also from the local public and especially the local artists who openly expressed their regret for not having joined in the project. By all accounts ‘Guests in … the enclave’ can be coined a success. Visitors were in excess of 300 on the opening night, works were sold and pieces commissioned from several artists [a small parenthesis here to note that all proceeds of sales went to the individual artists in full – we somehow managed to keep all expenses within our limited budget], there was ample exposure in the newspapers and on TV, and the contacts I had established at my earlier private viewing came up to us and pledged their support for any future events we decided to organize.
Surprisingly after only 18 months all the pieces seemed to be fitting into place. I had found a few artists with interesting work [Shan, Amanda, Vijen, Duane and Katy] and the artists of the enclave finally seemed willing to join in bringing legitimacy to the idea of setting up an artists’ society, but most importantly the whole dynamics we had engendered had gathered sufficient momentum to capture the interest of the business and financial community to the point where we didn’t have to look for sponsors but rather the sponsors were coming after us! My hopes were up again and I accepted the challenge the artists put to me of organising the next event. But this blog is getting far too long. I will place you once again on the roller-coaster ride of the enclave and leave you in suspense – in that uncomfortable void where you have climbed so high and know all too well that you must inevitably come rushing down again… the question, as always, is how deep and for how long.
To be continued
