Indonesian artist XR Harsono writes his Chinese name in ink on the glass, but the rain keeps washing his name away.
The moving video artwork Writing in rain (2011) symbolizes the loss of Chinese identity under Suharto’s regime, when Chinese Indonesians were forced to renounce their name and adopt an Indonesian name. It’s just one of countless stories The Great Indonesia Exhibition in the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam, which opens this Saturday.
With more than 300 objects, the exhibition tells the long, eventful history of Indonesia in nine themes. As a visitor you travel through the land and time, from the Majahapit empire to the present day. Anyone who enters the exhibition first receives a ‘mini-lecture’ in the form of infographics with some basic facts and then is successively immersed in the abundant nature and history from the old Indonesian empires to contemporary society.
It is good how historical objects are alternated with work by contemporary Indonesian artists, such as Alfiah Rahdini. Her work Sailor Moonah #2 can be seen in the part: ‘Old empires’, which covers, among other things, the history of Islam in Indonesia. The contemporary artwork aims to stimulate dialogue about the position of Muslim women in Indonesian society. However, this work, like most contemporary works of art, is still on its way to the Netherlands and is therefore not yet on display.
Forced labor with butterflies
According to the makers, the exhibition is a ‘polyphonic biography’ and an ‘ode to the cultural diversity’ of Indonesia. To draw attention to the diverse perspectives and traumatic experiences, we collaborated with a large number of Indonesian and Dutch experts, although only Dutch lenders provide the objects on display. But the positive thing is that the exhibition does not shy away from more difficult historical episodes.
For example, attention is paid to the history of slavery in Indonesia, including silhouette portraits of Bietje and Flora, two enslaved women. The portraits were made by Jan Brandes, their ‘owner’. Some pinned-on butterflies tell the story of forced labor in the remote Upper Digoel penal camp in New Guinea. Indonesian nationalists and communists were exiled here from 1927 onwards. As a form of employment, the exiles had to catch butterflies for a Dutch collector. The history of various Indonesian resistance heroes is also missing.
A few months ago the exhibition was discredited; looted works of art from the National Archives would be on display. For museum objects that have already been returned to Indonesia, such as a statue from the Singorasi culture, photographs have now been chosen.
The visitor is presented with a lot of information. In addition to the objects themselves, there are thematic texts on the wall, additional captions in the display case, an audio tour and video messages. As if that wasn’t enough, they have also chosen to create a second exhibition simultaneously. Large photos float above the exhibition that tie in with the themes, but which in terms of aesthetics would also fit into a Lonely Planet-travel Guide. The exhibition aims to do justice to the history of the country, but also to tell a story for a wide audience. The result is that you are overwhelmed with stimuli and information, despite the containers of herbs in a ‘reflection room’ at the end of the exhibition.
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The many perspectives make the exhibition valuable and draw attention to a history that desperately needs to be told, but something is still nagging. The exhibition is aimed at visitors with limited knowledge of Indonesia, but the thematic design means that as a visitor you sometimes have to look for the common thread and feel lost in the big story. The result is that The Great Indonesia Exhibition seems more like a long series of lectures than an in-depth exhibition.