Semsar Siahaan: In memoriam (2005)
artdesigncafé | café library | Published 24 January 2012
This article is a longer version of one published in Monday Magazine, Victoria, B.C., on 28 Feb 2005 with the title "Goodbye from Canada to Indonesian activist artist".
Semsar Siahaan, known to many people in Victoria involved with art, human rights activism, and Indonesia, died of a sudden heart attack in Tabanan, Bali, on Wednesday February 23rd. Semsar was born in Medan, capital of North Sumatra, Indonesia, in 1952, a Batak with Indian blood via his mother’s side, a Gemini born in the Year of the Dragon. [1] Upon his death, Semsar’s body was dressed in Balinese ritual garb, and his body was flown to Jakarta where he lay in state at Taman Ismail Marzuki, Jakarta’s art centre. Here dozens of artists gathered to say goodbye and pray for his soul.
I first encountered Semsar and his art while doing PhD research in Indonesia 17 years ago and was (like most people) immediately struck by the vibrancy and power in his drawings and paintings. Semsar was one of a small, dynamic number of socially engaged artists who used their art to raise consciousness and to give visual witness to conditions and events the media was unable to cover. This art was often censored but nonetheless could range more freely than verbal criticism. While Pramoedya and Rendra, Indonesia’s foremost historical fiction writer and poet, were nearly completely silenced, artists like FX Harsono, Moelyono, Dadang Christanto and Semsar kept working. None was more actively involved with local and international leftist and humanitarian networks than Semsar.
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Semsar Siahaan. (Left:) Double self-portrait; (Right:) Global trader, (2001).
Semsar was a strong personality: he had the charisma and persuasiveness of a born leader. His actions and art often performed like “beacons”, a longstanding series of sparks that started fires, many of them important and unifying, others less so. But his art is and will always remain a powerful humanitarian record and unique oeuvre within contemporary Indonesian and world art. Equally importantly, while at times at serious odds with his age-peers and fellow activist artists, Semsar inspired new generations of Indonesians to pick up the struggle to help make Indonesia a more democratic and humane nation, through a variety of social, political and expressive work; the Jaringan Kerja group is one example of this.
Semsar Siahaan: In memoriam - 1 | 2
Reference:
[1] Whereas English journalism would use the family name throughout, e.g. here: Siahaan, when discussing the person in question, there are traditionally no “first names” and “family names” in Indonesia. Hence in the press and in public, people are referred to by their most commonly used names, which to western readers may “look like” their personal names. I adhere to the Indonesian practice here: it is not a matter of “colonizing” the subject / person in question or of being patronizing. In fact, following Indonesian usage is, to me, a matter of respect and of following local linguistic practice of communicative consensus.
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