Women, Tradition and Art in Bali

Young painter Satya Cipta breaking ground

 

Museum Puri Lukisan was established to maintain a high level of quality in the arts of Bali at a time when artistic production was shifting away from the purely religious into the realm of the commercial.  Although art in Bali is no longer produced exclusively in the context of religious and cultural practices, the cultural and religious practices of Balinese Hindus are inseparable from artistic expression and also inform how art is viewed more broadly.

 

Although what is today referred to as traditional Balinese art is certainly rooted in these cultural and religious practices it stands apart from them in certain distinct ways, including the relative freedom given to express a certain amount of personal impressions.  Forms and techniques are also given a wider berth.

 

 How far the boundaries can be stretched before a particular artistic expression is no longer considered traditional is up for debate. While some consider any art produced using traditional techniques and style to still be traditional, others feel that themes and subjects should also remain within certain boundaries to be considered traditional.

 

The works of Satya Cipta stand somewhere in this grey area of tradition -and perhaps intentionally so. Cipta was born to Balinese parents in Sulawesi where she grew up as a cultural and religious minority. After studying art in Jakarta and returning to Bali with her family she found herself in a new kind of minority as her experience with and exposure to other ways of seeing and being in the world, left her no choice but to question certain aspects of her own culture – most notably the role that women are expected to play in Bali.

 

Cipta married a man from the village of Batuan, which is known the world over not only for the tremendous number of skilled artists of all disciplines who call this small village home but also for the way that painting, in particular, has flourished due to the extending of traditional boundaries in the subjects presented, while still maintaining certain core foundations.

 

In a very short time, Cipta learned to paint in the traditional style of Batuan but soon felt that the wide berth given to artists here to explore different subjects was too narrow for her. She went on to explore the style of painting developed by I Nyoman Lempad and then found a master painter in Ubud whose style and subject and approach she resonated with.

 

I Ketut Budiana is a truly masterful painter and sculptor whose works are distinctly rooted in the visual and philosophical traditions of Bali, yet depart from conventions in an equally distinct manner. Although a great number of painters in Bali have been influenced by Budiana’s style and approach, few if any have studied directly with him – until Satya Cipta that is.

 

In little over a year, this talented young painter came to find a visual and conceptual vocabulary of her own. In line with the Balinese tradition of learning directly from master painters by imitating their style, Cipta has taken key elements of Budiana’s work – both visually and conceptually. However, instead of only minor personal additions or derivations from her master’s style and methods, Cipta has leaped into an entirely new field of inquiry.

 

While, like Budiana, she focuses on expressing her own inner world through the lens of the lexicon of Balinese traditional arts, Satya has begun to explore her experience as a woman in Balinese society. This exploration ends up speaking of the role of women more broadly, bringing up some rather uncomfortable questions about the place of women including sexual violence, objectification, and the silencing of the female voice both in terms of the subjects presented in her works and the manner they are presented.

 

Perhaps if she had chosen to use a different visual vocabulary to express her feelings about such subjects, her works could be read as more personal explorations. However given the fact that the style of her works -though certainly not strictly traditional in technique and compositional style, they do contain enough elements of traditional Balinese painting, to draw attention to the particular context that she is referring to.

 

Satya Cipta’s works will be on display at Museum Puri Lukisan from October 6th to November 6th in a solo exhibition that presents her learning process. From the at times awkwardly self-conscious compositions of her earliest works to her powerfully harmonious rendering of lines in her more recent ones, this exhibition represents a momentous shift in woman’s place in the art of Bali.

 

Through her own personal explorations of her place, position, and feelings about these within her own culture, Satya Cipta has perhaps unwittingly carved out a new way of looking at and being a woman in Bali. 

 

Written by Gabriele Thiabaudeau, Published in October 2018 by International Bali Post