REALITY AND BEYOND
Solo Exhibition by NYOMAN NUARTA
19 September - 19 Oktober 2002
CP ARTSPACE, Washington DC, USA




Reality & Beyond

In Nyoman Nuarta’s sculptures, “representation” does not always agree with the common understanding of the word. Here, representation does not seek the truth and neither does it merely explore reality. As Nyoman Nuarta once said, “Reality for me is only a source for ideas. The portrayal of reality in my work is not always connected with the reality itself. In my sculptures, the ideas I have found in real life sometimes have symbolic meanings.”

In Nyoman Nuarta’s work, representations contain metaphors associated with his beliefs. Female figures in his work, for instance, do not represent women, but instead they stand for the human sensitivity possessed by both men and women. For Nuarta, this sensitivity, which is closely related to femininity, is a spirit that is intimately allied with religiosity. Such sensitivity proves as an antonym for the coarseness that is linked with a maleness owned by both men and women. In Nuarta’s sculptures, such coarseness is constantly portrayed using cocks as its symbol—cocks being a fighting animal in the Balinese traditions, just like bulls in the Spanish bullfight tradition.

It is therefore more suitable to view representations in Nyoman Nuarta’s work as a cultural representation. When he works, Nuarta does not only pay attention to his individual imaginations. Nuarta also takes into account cultural codings in searching for some shared meanings, as his thoughts always find their roots in the shared values of his community.

Nyoman Nuarta was born in Tabanan, Bali, and now lives and creates his sculptures in Bandung (200 kilometers from Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia), far from his original cultural community. Nuarta’s perception about “what is art” is very much influenced by his Balinese cultural background, where the traditions of the arts of painting and sculpting are viewed differently from those in the High Art traditions. To understand Nuarta’s contemporary work, therefore, is to consider a “localness” whose portrayal in Nuarta’s work often creates paradoxes.

Such uncommon representation in Nuarta’s work is much influenced by the perception of reality in Balinese thoughts. In the Balinese philosophy, there are two dimensions of reality. The first one can be read as “the real world,” which is called the sekala in Balinese. The second dimension, a “beyond-real reality,” is called the niskala. The belief in the two dimensions can be seen in the balance between the discourses on the material and the spiritual worlds in the Balinese daily life. In Balinese traditions, a spiritual discourse is not focused on its religious aspect that is concerned about life after death.

Explaining about his perception on those reality dimensions, Nuarta says, “The Balinese do not go to temples to perform religious services or to pray to God. God in the Balinese belief is situated in spaces and spaces are everywhere. The Balinese can thus pray everywhere, not only in temples.” Nuarta says that temples are where the Balinese honor and communicate with their ancestors. Everyone in Bali has ancestors—and this can be seen from the Balinese’s tradition to build temples in their family homes.

Every family in Bali takes care of their yards and their temples so that these temples do not seem to be abandoned. An abandoned yard in Bali is a sign that the owner is losing the link with his or her ancestors—and this in turn is the sign that the owner is disconnected with his or her tradition, spirituality, and belief in God. The condition of a yard in Bali does not only signify the clan’s identity and honor—it also shows the dialectical relation between the owner and their ancestors who have moved to the higher realm where they “live” among sacred spirits.

In Nuarta’s perception, the Balinese’s dialectical link with their ancestors is connected with their understanding about life, tradition, and reality. Nuarta beliefs that the Balinese traditions are not absolute rules that function to govern the public lives. The Balinese traditions, according to Nuarta, are a discourse on life, traditions, and reality, connected with some complex negotiations. Such condition makes the Balinese tradition a part of the daily life.

This Balinese morality also makes Nuarta belief that the reality discourse in Balinese thoughts is a discourse that involves three spaces: the individual space, the social space, and the sacred and invisible space of the ancestors. The negotiations between the individual and the social spaces take place in the real world—the sekala. This negotiation happens simultaneously with the negotiations in the invisible world—the niskala. During the negotiations in the invisible world, interactions between the individual and his or her ancestors take place, as well as interactions among the ancestors and between the ancestors and the sacred spirits. This belief shows that according to the Balinese, the real and the invisible worlds co-exist at the same space and time. They are both situated in the actual space.

Nuarta says that during the interactions between the individual and the ancestors, inspirations are often born. These inspirations are sometimes thought to be against the current tradition. “What these inspirations are, when they are born, and what for are not governed by the existing rules in the traditions,” says Nuarta. The role of such inspirations, however, is admitted in the Balinese tradition, although when they are first realized they may cause much dissent. “The Balinese belief that the ancestors and the sacred spirits are involved in such inspirations.”

According to Nuarta, these inspirations are precisely the one that governs the changes and the development in the Balinese traditions. Such inspirations often take form in art. “The beginning of changes in the Balinese traditions, therefore, most often surface through the art,” states Nuarta. Nuarta is sure that this is precisely the inspiration that his aesthetic beliefs stem from.

Nuarta’s work can perhaps be viewed as the interaction between the individual and the collective consciousness. In the theory of Carl Gustav Jung, such interaction serves as a cultural link, a tension that can only be seen when manifested through new traditional and cultural symbols that cannot be recognized as soon as they appear. Such manifestation stems from the instinctive urging of the ego to explore the collective consciousness, especially the repressed collective experiences.

In such interactions that cannot be fully explained, a transmutation of energy takes place where the emotions and energy from our consciousness are trans-mutated into recognized symbols. Such trans-mutated energy has the potentials to be creative and at the same time destructive. These are precisely the characteristic traits of avant-garde arts. The existence of symbolizations in cultures, through mythology and art forms, according to Jung, is based on such transmutation of energy.

Jim Supangkat | Curator

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