TRI TAKSU Cultural Project

Tri Taksu

I Nyoman Mandra (and artists from Kamasan), Paul Trinidad, Judith Rathu, Alexsander Panimba and I Kadek Sasangka bring their creative forces from Bali, Sulewasi and Australia to create Tri Taksu.

Meeting Mandra Judith Ratu, Aleksander Panimba;  I Nyoman Mandra, and Paul Trinidad

One failing of my life is an inability to correlate the contents of my mind with its roaming thoughts and emotions.  Every now and then I do my best to reconcile this fact and when I do, I always seem to come unstuck.  It is for this reason that working in Indonesia has been a great relief over the past ten years. 

Western culture seems awash in its own self perpetuated dark seas of infinity.  As one philosophical door closes another opens, political correctness mask over the battering rams of change.  The presidential race, Trump against Clinton seem much akin to the Ramayana yarns (Rahwana against Sita, see also Kecak1) which still remain the same, the ones that folk in Indonesia were depicting with Kulit puppets since the beginning of time.2

Science strains us in another direction, climate change, save the barrier reef.  Somehow removed we rush to articulate the transient incidents which for centuries have been described as revelations or unknown awesome grandeurs and marvellous survivals.

Tengkorak (bones and skulls) Kete Kesu Photo: Aleksander Panimba

Upon entering Kete Kesu3 you take a flying step backward into these times where truth is still a cavalcade of mystic and animistic dreams linking their original ancestors back to the Chinese mainland 400 years earlier in time4.  Beasts, their bones and skulls, carved images of patterns and ayam jantan  (roosters) predominate the mysticism which is just as real and important in strange survivals now as it was in the forbidden eons no so far distant.

Aleksander Panimba, calls Kete Kesu home as have all of his ancestors, he attests the dead are still living among us as he walks among the tulang tengkorak (bones and skulls) of his ancestors which lay in ancient and decaying funerary boats (Saringan) and caves hewn and naturally occurring in the limestone reef which towers above his village.

Funerary boats (Saringan) Photo: Aleksander Panimba

Mandra’s village (Banjar Sangging) is steeped in as much history, but the bones are not stacked in to holes in the limestone.  History and mythology is depicted in the Ramayana stories in the Kamasan paintings.  The living canvases speak the voice of god through the hand of the Artist, Mandra, the greatest living Kamasan artist of them all.
Humbly he offers me a collection of paintings from his family, his wife, his daughter and his sons.  As he hands them to me and speaks in tones I do not understand, I have problems correlating it all. Emotion sweeps over me as the gentleman entrusts me with his family heritage. 

Mandra is happy his children (artworks) will be travelling to another land and the great teacher is keen that they should be shared, the stories and the art should be known far from Kamasan as well as in the confines of the small village.
Like the minstrel who penned House of the Rising Sun I sense the Kamasan paintings have ruined me.  They contain the essential formal elements of academy art in a sublime language of economy and agency.  I have fallen in love with the rivalry, the beauty, the body language and the eye contact. Each princess is more beautiful than the next the character of each painting develops more and more with each intimate contact.  

I Nyoman Mandra Darma Wangsa 2012

Mandra meets Aleks, Mandra is curious about Toraja – they introduce themselves by their country and begin talking the universal language of artists and their connection with the cosmos.  I cannot keep up but I am gratified to see by the glowing faces, Mandra’s spirit is growing.  I can see the creative men were more affected as the engagement developed,  I could only give vague descriptions as my imagination captured fugitive collisions between figures and landscapes known best to artists and poets, their Bahasa (language) of line and form transcends Western aesthetics as I witness.

And as they bantered my attention returned to the beautiful princess Darma Wangsa and the house of the rising sun, this is Taksu.

This is a collaborative project with ALVA (Architecture Landscape and Visual Arts) University of Western Australia, Bali Art exchange Bali Studio VISA 2270 Study program.

Supported by:

Dean of Faculty W.Prof. Simon Anderson.

Indonesian Consulate Perth (link)
Artsource