by Max Vickery.

I spoke with Aris Prabawa and Mohamad Yusuf of Taring Padi for Dispatch Review on Wednesday 4 December to get an idea of the history of their process and involvement in protest movements. At the end of our conversation, having a little back and forth about radicalism, protest, and art after switching the recorder off, Aris said a particularly wonderful phrase about Taring Padi’s approach to art which beautifully summarised much of our interview: ‘We talk, we discuss’. Thanks for the title!
        Taring Padi’s collaborative banner in the Art Gallery of Western Australia’s foyer is set to be unveiled on Saturday 7 December. It’s a massive piece whose top half looms over the black privacy screens set up around it. Produced with local Indigenous artists Sharyn Egan, Yabini Kickett, Ilona McGuire and Tyrown Waigana, the banner effectively synthesises shared struggles while maintaining a specific focus on the themes and issues facing Aboriginal people in Western Australia.
        The symbolism is direct. In the top right a sharp-toothed robot slices through the earth with a circular saw, as a skeleton with handcuffed wrists leaps to its freedom. In the bottom left a monstrous creature presides over a desk overflowing with skulls while their graves recede into the distance. The focal point of the work is not, however, so dystopian. Throngs of people engaged in acts of civil disobedience, solidarity, and friendship fill the majority of the canvas. A flaming bulldozer is being pushed over a cliff by a crowd in the middle left, and at the centre Indonesian and Indigenous Australian figures embrace before a rolling vista of firelit dances reminiscent of depictions of corroborees. The outlook of the work is hopeful, and it is reassuring for the spirit to see this work at a time when the world is wracked with war and genocide.

[Max]: So everything kicked off in 1998, that’s when it all started, but before that you were—I’m just assuming from watching some documentaries, I got to watch Art, Activism, and Rock’n’Roll, which was great… but you guys kinda came from the punk scene, right?

[Aris]: Yes some of us. Before, yeah, from that story, before the reformation in 1998—

[M]: (That’s Reformasi, right?)

[A]: Reformasi, yeah like the… we need to have a democracy in Indonesia, you know? Democracy was a dream for us, because being under authoritarian dictatorship of Suharto, with his militaries, for many years, 32 years. It’s kind of, makes us sick. Felt like we don’t get many chances to speak up or talk about the rights, human rights, or, you know, just suffering from the political feud.

[Yusuf]: We find like, a great moment in that time, the time our university moved to another place, so the old building—we stayed there.

[M]: (It was a squat right?)

[Y]: Yeah, we squat in that place around five years. So Taring Padi, we rise up in that place. Before we are student artists, and use that building for Taring Padi activity, and many communities joined with us. And it’s close to the centre, so every condition, we can make a demonstration easily to the cities because this time is a really hot situation era, reformation era, everyone have a theory about how the new things come. So, yeah, that situation was really hot and we rise as art students, artists, we are using art for political education.

[M]: (Yeah.)

[Y]: Because we are still students in that time, so we can occupy that building as a—

[A]: Basically, protect that historical building. That building was the first art school in south-east Asia.

[M]: (What’s it called?)

[A]: The Indonesian Institute of Art, at that time.

[Y]: From around ‘60, yeah?

[A]: Oh, ‘40s, it was Sukarno. Yeah, Sukarno created it, the first President—no, ‘51.

[M]: So Sukarno made the first, kind of, arts institute?

[A]: Yeah, yeah, because Sukarno loved art. The President loved art. He could paint as well. So he was very close with artists in that time, so many sculptures he created in that era. National sculptures of the Sukarno era. Yeah, he was very close to the artists, a lot of revolutionary artists, that helped bring independence to Indonesia from the Dutch Era.

[M]: Oh, so he brought Dutch artists?

[A]: Yeah, you know, we were colonised by the Dutch for 350 years. That’s a long—and a lot of, some of our artists went to study art in Holland. There’s modern arts coming to Indonesia.

[M]: Because there’s always been a cross-pollination, I know at least in music that, uh, Gamelan, had a massive influence on music particularly after… what was it… the World’s Fair in Paris, I think. In terms of organising the protests, how did you go about, kind of—I mean, you said it was a hot period, I imagine it wasn’t particularly hard to call people out, but what were the kind of issues that were coming up, what were people aggrieved about, how did your art play a role in that?

[Y]: So, in the early Reformasi, every organisation tried to collect mass, collecting mass to follow their organisation.

[A]: (Organise…)

[M]: And this is after—’cause the PKI [The Indonesian Communist Party] is gone, right? As soon as Suharto is in—

[Y]: Already gone, forbidden. In our era we are still forbidden from talking about the communist party. So yeah, it’s a big trauma, a big stigma, so every… yeah. In the Suharto era it’s very difficult. Even the book we have—we called it the white book—it’s forbidden to read that book.

[M]: The white book? What was that?

[Y]: It’s like uh… every kind of book where they protest Suharto. Suharto called it a “white book”, so it’s like a stigmatised book where… any kind of book that criticises Suharto.

[A]: Yeah like, things from the history in the ‘60s in Indonesia is big with the lefties, basically from the freedom… You know—

[M]: The national independence struggle, yeah.

[A]: National independence, freedom.

[M]: Because it was uh, “Marhaenism”? The kind of Indonesian—Communism with Indonesian characteristics that Sukarno supported, right?

[A]: Yeah, Sukarno, as President, had to be democratic to any ideologies to bring the Indonesians better, and back then the communist party was very big, and the Cold War, big politics happened, you know. Of course, you know, the CIA don’t want to see Indonesia, the biggest left country…

[M]: ‘Cause that’s all in the open now, like, Suharto was backed by the CIA.

[A]: Back in, you know… Vietnam, that kind of thing, South-east Asia is very—

[M]: Strategically important.

[A]: Yeah, yeah, and also then we have big—so much natural resources that they can, you know, being imperialists, taking Indonesia in the economic way through politics and support for militarism and the military, very strong to get rid of these communists and rebels. That’s why Indonesia have to be very strong in their military, because they worry about, you know, national, geographically, you know… independent…

[M]: Mm, like, just, regional independence movements?

[A]: Yeah, they just want to be together and easier to control, you know?

[M]: Interesting, so it’s like, you have like, a pan-Indonesian nationalism versus these kind of more local groups.

[A]: Yeah, before that, you know, a lot of movements, the Islamic movement, or Indigenous movements as well on different islands like West Papua, Maluku, Sulawesi, Sumatra, it’s just—

[M]: Yeah, well, yeah, it’s huge.

[Y]: In another banner, we are talking about how the continuation—the upgrade of colonialism is by militarism. So there still stays, in any country, in any places with militarism, so militarism can control everything because they have a legal weapon. So, from the colonialism state, the violences and the armies still stay. So, how neocolonialism still happens.

[M]: So, we’re talking about that Suharto period, or are we talking about… right up to today?

[Y&A]: Yes! Yes.

[M]: So the military’s still, well, I’ve seen, you know, I remember the protests, a few years ago now, and seeing all the riot police out was really terrifying, but also really inspiring to see people go out to fight for a democratic society, fight for a better world. Um, but, yeah, just to return to the organising element, when you called protests, who shows up?

[Y]: When we create the protests, sometimes the people in the villages, when they have issues, call us, because they know what Taring Padi do. We are using art as protest and political art. Sometimes they call to ask to help them to make an artistic protest. Sometimes we go to some places and talk with the people, and ask them and make an event with the people, and make a protest too. Or some, we make a movement, any movement in our cities in Indonesia, we have the student movement that we are following and joined with the people. And so, because we’re using art, so it’s interesting for the people to know—

[M]: (It’s attractive.)

[Y]: Attractive, and more powerful, and yeah. People are more—

[A]: The positive way to understand the political context, I think… we’ve been together for 25 years, and then so many groups inspired by us as well, so we network. You know, like, we have networks around the world as well, that’s why, we are maintaining this network around Indonesia and outside.

[M]: Like your work with the Sephardi artists in Brazil, right?

[A]: Yeah, yeah, that’s right.

[Y]: Another protest we are able to make is… we come to our network, our community networking, we go to them and make a cardboard puppet workshop, and collect their issues, what they want—every village has different issues—we collect and so all of the puppets, with every different issue from every different community. So this, another kind of way we make a protest.

[M]: Yeah, because I saw the wonderful, um, scarecrows, I forget where that was with the farmers… in the early 2000s.

[A]: Yeah.

[M]: Yeah, yeah, and it’s just so wonderful as well… it’s such an interesting element of your practice that—and, like, I say practice but it’s also politics, right?—

[A]: Yeah.

[M]: That it’s, like, it’s all about bringing everyone in together, and letting loose the, kind of, like, creative energy of everyday people which, most of the time in art, is shuffled off to the side.

[Y&A]: Yeah, yeah.

[M]: Like, art is just a thing that the big names do, you know, Jeff Koons or whatever.

[Y]: We give the opportunity to the people to create art when they’re never close with art, but they have potential to make art. So we give them easy things, like cardboard, wall paint, where it is very easy to get it in Indonesia so we can create something together. They never look at it like that, using brush and paint… so this is a more, is a really… the energy is really good for us to work together like that.

[M]: I mean, it’s just that with the way things are done generally, in art in Australia, is, again, this, like, top-down, big institutions… and I was curious about working with AGWA, how did that come about.

[A]: ‘Cause, we, you know, that I was talking about the networks, like, we’re open to level of the art scene or people to get the connections. Sometimes we connect with, we meet artists and the artists have their own community and connections, and… because we are artists, you know, doing this kind of project all the time, that’s why like, last time… earlier this year we had an exhibition in Brisbane, and we connected with Indigenous people there before through this art festival in Germany, and that moment is, kind of, there’s energy together. Let’s do a project, more interesting, because we want to be connected to all—everyone. Just, you know, multiculturally we have to connect because everyone has their own history, that they can tell. Is there any issue or something that we can speak up together that would be great—in art especially—in art and music. That’s, you know, so many things that we can express in there, in freedom. Yeah, like, connecting with institutions, sometimes we work with educational institutions, community, that’s what we, you know… why not?

[M]: Yeah, exactly.

[Y]: Our collective is really open for everything, we’re adaptable, but we still keep our principle to fight about human rights and environmental issues. Even when we create any content or context with all the organisations joined with this situation.

[A]: Because it’s important to connect to local people, between humans, it doesn’t matter if we have to go through the institution, but, we’re trying to, you know, connect. This project is the first time I met Rachel [Ciesla], and I’m interested to have this project, you know, in the building, kind of exclusive, it doesn’t matter, but we have to ask “Can you find these people?”, because we always want to know what’s going on in their land, because they’re no better off. And they find artists and we connect, and we agree: let’s do collaborations. That’s what we do everywhere, anywhere we want to have a project.

[M]: These meetings.

[A]: Yeah, meetings.

[Y]: Coming together and working together is somehow a principle to it working.

[M]: I guess another question would be about the work that’s in AGWA at the moment. So, you’ve been working with Noongar artists, and the work, as I understand it, is about a whole bunch of different things, but it feels to me that this collaboration also draws on the colonial sympathies between Indonesia and Australia, what’s your take on that?

[A]: Yes, solidarity. And yeah, we were colonised by Europeans as well, there’s a context that is easy to connect, because the colonisers back in the olden days, they all worked together. They had multinational companies as well, you know, back then that were trading and—

[M]: Like, the chartered companies.

[A]: We have similarity, an inheritance as a thing that we can use or don’t use. That being colonised, we go straight to connect, let’s do something. We have our own cultural, you know, our life, our education, our own knowledge that we can share with each other.

[Y]: Human rights issues and environmental issues will always be in our work. So the connection is, what we’re talking about what we discuss by us and our network, this is an equal discussion on how to create the artwork. So this was a long discussion on how we create the artwork in AGWA. So, yeah, some of us are making sketches, and we collect the sketches and—

[A]: The references.

[M]: And what kind of references were you drawing on?

[A]: Oh, the story, you know, we have references that we often join with the community who fight against mining industry, mining explorations—

[M]: Yeah, the big story in Australia.

[A]: Yeah, big, very big. But, in reality, the artists from here are interested to talk about discrimination, racism towards young aboriginal people, juvenile crime—

[M]: Like deaths in custody and youth detention?

[A]: You know, the kind of big, heavy issues in reality. When we’re looking at Indonesia as well, there are similar, like there is people—

[M]: Yeah we could talk about Papua.

[A]: Yeah, yeah.

[Y]: When we create the artwork it’s kind of a small reset for us to understand the themes of what we created. Just knowing the depth of the case or something, so we can follow the thing, and then we sketch it some…

[M]: I did want to just quickly ask, when I first was watching the documentary, the thing that struck me was how similar your work is to Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, I mean, the parallels are striking: you go into a community, discern the themes that are the issues that people have, and then you go about creating a work of some kind, doing it in an intensely collaborative way with multiple different specialists and the whole community. I was wondering if Taring Padi’s strategy emerged from theory or spontaneously from practice?

[Y]: We have the same strategy because we already have done it many times, so we find the easy form to go to the people and make the people interested in what we can do. Because we are artists, we bring that stuff too to the people, and they’re interesting.

[A]: In the community not everyone can draw or create, can imagine visually, but we engage them. Spontaneously we talk and have fun, laugh, and that’s the way we approach it.

[M]: I might let you guys be, but just one more question about the situation in Indonesia, is it Prabowo Subianto who’s just come in in Indonesia? So what’s the situation for Taring Padi in Indonesia, what do things look like going forward.

[Y]: For me it’s like, we’re already following the political situation since the reformation era, following the political situation in Indonesia is really not good for our collective. Because it is not productive, we just kind of, like, elections we know that, but sure, we’re just supporting the people, calling back in solidarity is more important, teaching each other about the situation, conditions, knowledge, everything is more important to us, to make the people understand and educated about the situation. Because the… 58% voted for Subianto, so there’s a low education system. They bring popular issues like food, and stuff like that. So following that political situation is not healthy for our collective.

[A]: Not the way!

[Y]: Not the way.

[A]: Not the only way…

[Y]: But teaching people, working with the people is more… makes a big hope.

[M]: It’s like those smaller, local political situations are more productive for your work.

[A]: Independent, you know, educate us to be independent, people’s independence anyway, they don’t get supported by the government much. They don’t like working, their low level of working class, they have to do it because they don’t get support. Why bother caring about their country, but the state or government, because they basically are trying to control everyone. In the election Prabowo just used money language to fool people that they could support him. You know, every family got sixty dollars each, automatically they are like “He cares about people”. When actually, he takes more than he serves. Because he’s from a rich family—

[M]: ‘Cause he was an officer, right? In the military?

[A]: He was a general, he’s—

[M]: A war criminal.

[A]: Yeah, and Suharto’s son-in-law, and it’s just power and power and he’s got business everywhere in Indonesia, he’s got an inheritance by his parents, his economic… he knows how to corrupt. Easily, corrupt. I think we don’t want to get dragged into that political situation, to keep our independence, you know. We are gonna be their enemies, you know, always. Years ago someone said that our group is in the list of, you know, undercover, you know, the agents—

[M]: What like, infiltrated organisations?

[A]: We were in there for many years! We were kinda… “Are we scared?”

[M]: There’s something funny about it isn’t there. Some older activists in Australia are starting to get access to their ASIO files, you know, from the ‘60s and ‘70s, and I guess the good thing is that there’s a lot of photos of them looking cool at demonstrations and stuff. There’s a bit of an upside.

[Y&A]: Yeah, yeah!

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Image credits:

1. Taring Padi, Kendeng Lestari, Nyawiji Kanggo Ibu Bumi (Kendeng Lestari, Being One with Mother Earth) (detail), 2023, acrylic on canvas, 480 x 600 cm. Courtesy of Griffith University Art Museum. Photo: Louis Lim.

2. Ngaliya Budjong Djarra in progress, Yeronga Paint Factory, Brisbane, February 2024. Courtesy of Taring Padi, proppaNOW, and Griffith University Art Museum. Photo: Louis Lim.