COMES FROM THE SHADOW JUMAADI
COMES FROM THE SHADOW JUMAADI ‘My works attempt to become the shadow, or perhaps they originated from shadow. They are often about birth, love and death, where displacement, isolation, connectivity and separation are emphasised.’ Jumaadi Jumaadi’s exhibition, Comes from the shadow, brings together powerful and beautiful works evoking birth and death. Life is there too, frail and fluid between these absolutes. The artist’s reference to “shadow” is metaphoric, through his exploration of the struggles of human existence, but it is also literal. One of his major influences is the Indonesian art of shadow theatre, or
wayang kulit. Although there is darkness in the work, this is constantly offset by light, whimsy and humour. Jumaadi’s iconography is endlessly evocative, seeming to embody one thing and the opposite all at once. His art is never about one thing. Comes from the shadow is the epitome of this space of suspension, highlighting the relationship between opposites, and the confronting closeness of life and death. Jumaadi was born in a fish farming village of Sidoarjo in East Java, Indonesia, in 1973. His family did not place a lot of emphasis on the arts and creativity. In his late teens and early 20s, he broadened his life experience, spending time on the streets of Yogyakarta and Surabaya, There he experimented with poetry, art and ideas, and met an international community. Love led him to Australia, and his formal art training took place at the National Art
School (NAS), Sydney, where he completed a Bachelor of Fine Art in 2000, and a Master of Fine Art in 2008. Jumaadi’s influences are wonderfully divergent. His imagery comes from many places, combining personal and universal experience, tradition with contemporary life, and various artistic influences. Studying at NAS, one of Jumaadi’s favourite artists was New Zealand artist, Colin McCahon, whose influences you can still see in his emphasis on light, air, landscape, and spirituality. Other influences include the American Abstract Expressionists, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda. However, to paint Jumaadi’s art as being the product of influences is misleading. His work is very much his own. He has never been interested in creating representational images and laughs that he has not moved that far from his own childhood drawings. He remembers taunting friends by depicting classmates kissing. Whilst his mature work does not have the same intent, the form is similar, with relationships forming an important part of his oeuvre. After graduating from the art school, Jumaadi found his family were bemused by the art he was making. It had also dawned on him how little he knew about his birth country. Concern with this disconnect led him to spend time learning shadow theatre from local puppet masters and expanding his knowledge of Indonesian culture.
In the garden 1 and In the garden 2 2019 have been delicately cut from buffalo hide, the traditional medium of the wayang puppets. Jumaadi makes these works with puppet makers in Indonesia, developing the cut works from his drawings. He is fascinated by composition and plays endlessly to work out different options with it (with multiple works going at once). Despite the largeness of his themes, when he is working, the meaning of the works often slips into the background. He is more concerned with picture-making than conveying a message. Jumaadi is the master of combining imagery to imply a story without actually providing one. He hereby sets our imaginations in motion and encourages us in looking. In the above pieces, we see a couple in stiff embrace. It is not clear whether they love or resist each other. In In the garden 2, an unborn child is visible within the woman’s womb. In In the garden 1, the foetus is suspended as if between heaven and earth. Doves fly overhead and below there is a seething scene with scavenging dogs and fire. Cars suggest the bustle of everyday life. Tree roots and crowns extend like fingers, inferring the interconnectedness of the natural world. The work could be understood to reference the rise and fall of Adam and Eve. Jumaadi highlights the fragility of life in these early
stages, and the excitement and trepidation of a new family. However, the tension created in these images does not come from what is happening in them, rather, from what may be. Our discomfort comes ultimately from our fear of death. This stems from our knowledge that death is inevitable, but when and how it will take place is unknowable. Jumaadi’s work highlights that it is as natural to die as it is to be born. Jumaadi himself had to come to terms with death at an early age. He lost his infant brother when he was 11 and he and his three other brothers buried the body. This involved going down into the hole that had been dug in the earth. This experience made him all too aware that life is precious and fleeting.
Uterus 2019 uses the motif of the womb again. In this
multi-panelled work, chinagraph on mulberry paper, he has drawn a triple valved uterus. The environment around the unborn child is a vast landscape. Jumaadi juxtaposes two mothers, the human mother and mother earth. Uterus has echoes of Philip Guston, the great American expressionist, with its cartoonish delivery, or even William Kentridge, with its suggestion of movement through mark making. The work conveys a feeling of loneliness present in all that Jumaadi makes. The uterus gives weight. It speaks to Jumaadi’s interest in narrative and his want to emotionally charge his images. An organ that nurtures life, the uterus is the embodiment of story.
Birth and dog, Snake wedding and Bone 2018 was made in Bali, where the artist felt aware of the tradition of Hindu painting. Painted on unstretched calico, it hangs in three panels, and portrays the transition from birth to death.
The three pieces were made as separate works, but came together in Jumaadi’s subsequent review of them. In the first we see birth, with a multi-limbed figure growing from or into the earth, in the third death, and in the central panel, a motif of a snake eating its own tail. This snake is a recurring image in Jumaadi’s work. The concept of the ouroboros is ancient and used across many cultures as a symbol of harmony, eternity, and the cycle of birth and death. It symbolises the cyclic nature of the life, and creation out of destruction. Head and tail, it is a unified circle of opposites. In the third panel a veil of rain, tears of the earth, returns the body to the soil.
Who’s afraid of the wood 2011 is the earliest work in the exhibition and the most political of Jumaadi’s career. It is different from the other works in that it is about a specific event. Commissioned in 2011 for the 14th Jakarta Biennale, this piece references criminal cases of two Indonesian serial killers who confessed to molesting and then murdering 26 people, mainly street children aged between 6 and 15. The murders took place in the nation’s capital, Jakarta. The first killer was convicted in 1997, and the second in 2010. The title of the installation is a reference to the children’s fairy-tale Little Red Riding Hood. Jumaadi draws attention to the gruesome tragedy of those events and the Indonesian government’s failure to keep the streets of Jakarta safe. This work was made during a focused government campaign which upheld Jakarta as city of culture and the arts and “the city that never sleeps”. This smoke screened the dangers of life on the city’s streets.
Who’s afraid of the wood takes the form of dozens of dismembered heads, hands and feet, and lost shoes and thongs, all skilfully carved from timber and sanded back to a silky finish. It is positioned on the ground, so that we have to look over it to see it, or kneel down to engage with it properly. This rouses immediate empathy from us as viewers. Serene and elegant, the forms have resonances with traditional Buddhist statues. Faces rest as if in meditation. Some hands appear to show the peace that comes when life leaves the body. Others twist between pain and prayer. In his depiction of the children, Jumaadi infers that despite innocence or individual virtue, no-one is protected from the dangers of the world. Though stunningly diverse, Jumaadi’s work has a distinct coherence. With his pictorial language, he gently invites us to think more deeply about our existence. The exhibition’s themes are arresting, but his work has a softness. It speaks about life and things outside of our control. It brings home the simple reality of life’s impermanence. Kezia Geddes, Curator, Lismore Regional Gallery, August 2019
images front cover: Jumaadi, Birth and dog, Snake wedding and Bone (centre panel, detail) 2018, acrylic on calico, 300 x 460cm back cover: Jumaadi, Birth and dog, Snake wedding and Bone (left panel) 2018, acrylic on calico, 300 x 460cm inside left to right: Jumaadi, In the garden 1 2019, acrylic on buffalo hide, 92 x 76cm; Jumaadi, Who’s afraid of the wood 2011, timber, dimensions variable; Jumaadi, In the garden 2 2019, acrylic on buffalo hide, 99 x 66cm, All images courtesy King Street Gallery on William, Sydney ;
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Exhibition dates: 14 September – 17 November 2019 at Lismore Regional Gallery