The introductory wall text to the exhibition Revolution! Indonesia Independent summarizes very succinctly the historical link between the Netherlands and the Indonesian archipelago (“more than three centuries of colonial occupation by the Netherlands”), and describes the content of the exhibition just as succinctly. ‘Experiences and eyewitness accounts’ should provide insight ‘into this important history, for Indonesia, the Netherlands and the world’. That is a strong conclusion, but not strange for an exhibition with an exclamation mark in the title. Most decisive is this sentence: „Revolusi! is about people in the struggle for independence (1945-1949)”. By not allowing decolonization time before that four-year period, the Rijksmuseum rigorously delineates its outline of the Indonesian pursuit of freedom and self-determination.
A decision that the first room immediately emphasized with the projection of photos of Sukarno who, on August 17, 1945, recited the Proklamasi, announcing that Indonesia will continue as an independent republic, before a modest crowd. Soemarto Frans Mendur was the photographer, in other words an eyewitness report, fitting within the framework of the exhibition, but without prior knowledge there is little more to see than coarse-grained people from afar and in the past who seem to be involved in something official.
Without foreknowledge, there is little more to see in the first room than coarse-grained people from afar and in the past who seem to be involved in something official.
The next room, again illuminated photos on the wall, young men this time, images from the friend book of Sutarso Nasrudin, who was imprisoned at the end of 1948 and later executed by Dutch soldiers. The friends’ booklet became a source of information, it is not clear which of Nasrudin’s photogenic comrades were eventually caught. The next room contains the only foray into a world after 1949, a room-filling installation by the Indonesian artist Timoteus Anggawan Kusno (1989). Hanging batik banners with prayers, empty picture frames with the names of former governors-general such as Rochussen and Van der Wijck, dog-like creatures with golden fur or heads, a flying creature with twisted trumpets as tail: a didactic work by a talented artist, but so showy reasonable and on topic that inclusion of this installation raises the suspicion of a safe check-off.
The thematic titles of the rooms start to stand out. Red & White, We Are A Free Nation, Violence, Information War, War and Diplomacy, Artists and Revolution: they sound like the titles of chapters in a textbook. Yet no history lesson is given, the design is too fragmentary, too implicit for that, the testimonies are introverted, not attached to larger connections or stories. The medium that the curators from the Netherlands and Indonesia ultimately used to communicate information about the revolution turned out to be emotion. Via imagination and empathy to insight, from provoked feeling to hoped-for thought, an ubiquitous concept, a cliché by now. In the catalogue, curator of History of the Rijksmuseum Harm Stevens describes the tactics used as follows: “Reader and visitor look through the eyes of the people who experienced the revolution and are thus invited to constantly change course.” Which beacons? The political or moral? The exhibition seems to be mainly concerned with the hyper-conscious distribution of sympathy.
This causes curious merges and omissions. In the room dedicated to Violence, the first thing that catches the eye is a tall display case with a dress on a mannequin, a sunny house dress made of silk maps, made in 1945 by Jeanne van Leur-de Loos after two years of Japanese internment. The dress and the story behind it radiate resilience and an exciting improvisational ability, but it is a wonderful object in an arrangement devoted to violence, especially since Van Leur-de Loos left the turbulent decolonization behind him early in 1946 and left for the Netherlands. Laetitia Kwee’s baby book, the photo of her family with Javanese help in the snow; the typewritten, yellowed list of names of all those killed in the town of Tegal between 10 and 12 October 1945; the cartoonish drawings of artist correspondent Tony Rafty of soldiers, police officers and evacuees; the black-and-white footage of the arrival of the British army, of ‘revolutionary activity’ on the streets, of the release of camp inmates, of pemoedas (young warriors) with spears and swords. Above all, these testimonies seem to have to mobilize feelings, they do not evoke a context that really depicts or illuminates the violence, the concrete destructive effect of political and social circumstances, of destructive loyalties.
Back to Sutarso Nasrudin’s friends book. With a little extra explanation, with just a little more chronological space, the collection of photos of those charismatic lads could clarify the specific violence during the decolonization of the late 1940s. There is another photo of self-confident, posing young Indonesian gentlemen, shot in The Hague in 1927. Five of them in suits, all members of the Perhimpunan Indonesia, the anti-colonial, nationalist student association for Indonesians in Leiden, one of them being the later First Vice President of the Republic, Mohammed Hatta. It is therefore not surprising that twenty years later young Indonesians can be so convinced of their central role in their own future, their self-awareness is years in the making† In the prime of their lives, their combativeness encounters young Dutch men who, after centuries of colonial dehumanization, expect an inferior, ugly other, but are confronted with attractive peers in modern clothes. The charisma of the other then acts as a taunt, increasing the desire to harass those dark, mocking bodies fiercely.
Sympathy cannot be shared with impunity, so the exhibition is unable to maintain the balance. The Information War room only shows the propaganda from the Indonesian side, not the Dutch. In War and Diplomacy, in a display case are a vest, pillow and diaper made from linen book covers for baby Merapi. Her mother Julia Nelisse lacked dust, because it went up to the shrouds for all the fatalities caused by ‘revolutionary violence’ that washed up via the local river in Central Java. Gripping material, but questions also arise. Did all the corpses receive the same treatment? Did the dead take precedence over all the living or just Julia Nelisse and others like her? Nearby is also the highlight of Revolusi!, a collection of watercolors by Mohammed Toha Adimidjojo, who, at the age of 11, was commissioned by his teacher Dullah, then a well-known social realist painter, to document the Dutch occupation of his hometown Yogyakarta. . The dazzling Toha is clearly gifted, in self-assured pranks and sophisticated compositions he brings to life the persecution and struggle that surround him.
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Another favorite in the Artists and Revolution room is a painting by Otto Djaya entitled pembrontak, a powerful image in expressive colors of three revolutionaries in full armor. The painting has previously hung in a Dutch museum, in 1947 in the Stedelijk Museum as part of the exhibition Two Indonesian painters, a political statement by the then museum director Willem Sandberg, the kind of progressive gesture that the Rijksmuseum does not seem ready for in 2022. In his foreword to the catalogue, director Taco Dibbits Revolution! “no terminal”. The selected objects and testimonies seem to aim for the most common acclaim possible for this still painful, controversial and confrontational part of Dutch history. Together they form such a cautious beginning that the exhibition gives the impression of a feint.
One last example. A film fragment, KNIL soldiers check a car of some representatives of the Republic. A white officer waves to the cameraman, gestures for him to stop filming, the recording stops promptly. The Rijksmuseum has failed to explain what happened next.
Descriptions objects: Kester Freriks
A version of this article also appeared in NRC Handelsblad on 12 February 2022
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of February 12, 2022