Today, archival photography is increasingly attracting the interest of those seeking to unfold the secrets that shroud images of the past in dark mystery. As time goes by, the changing spirit of the times infuses an increasing curiosity into what the past may have held in terms of today’s life.
STORY BY Carla Bianpoen | PHOTOS BY Gajah Gallery
Today, archival photography is increasingly attracting the interest of those seeking to unfold the secrets that shroud images of the past in dark mystery. As time goes by, the changing spirit of the times infuses an increasing curiosity into what the past may have held in terms of today’s life.
One of the recent art exhibitions of South East Asian artists’ works posed exactly such questions. Held at Gajah Gallery (Singapore, Jakarta), and titled Customised Postures (De) Colonizing Gestures, the exhibition of South East Asian artists was curated by UK-based, Edinburgh- educated art historian/curator/critic DR Alexander Supartono.
In this, the work by Indonesian artist Abednego Trianto stood out by its sheer perfection in professional quality merging with visionary insights and artistic creativity.
Abednego Trianto’s work titled What Am I Going to Be When I Grow Up? Raden Ajoe, Of Course, is based on a series of ten early 20th- century studio portraits of Javanese aristocratic couples, which Abed Trianto researched and reworked in a way that opened up the mystery shrouding the portraits and brought to light the prevalent problem of patriarchy that continues to the present time.
Abed Trianto revealed that, whilst preparing this work for his participation in the show, he went to the University Library in Leiden, The Netherlands, to find out more about the archival portraits that were easily found on the internet and in other publications. Yet, he wanted to go beyond the image. “I always like to know about the lives behind the image,” he explained.
And true enough, as he keenly observed the photographs at the Leiden University Library, it was the accompanying captions rather than the pictures themselves that piqued his close attention.
Whilst the couples were dressed in rich, opulent clothing that fitted the level of Javanese aristocracy, with the men fiercely standing and their spouses timidly seated, Abed Trianto found a remarkable descriptive difference in the naming of the figures. The men were each indicated by their name besides their position as Regent, whilst the women remained unnamed and indicated by the mere term of Raden Ajoe, a title for married women of the nobility.
So, already at that time, women were not as important compared to men. Yet there was one portrait that indicated a difference. It featured a couple for which the caption named the woman first and the man thereafter. It read, “Kartini and her spouse, Raden Adipati Djojoadiningrat, regent of Rembang,” giving prominence to the woman.
Indeed, literature mentions that Kartini, a fighter for equality, had set her conditions when accepting to marry the Regent, who had already several wives.
Abed Trianto said he then understood how, already at that time, women were, in fact, understated in the culture of rampant patriarchy.
He decided to rectify the gender hierarchy artistically.
Cropping out the faces, hands, and feet of the women in the original pictures,
he pasted them on the back of the photographs where he had copied in handwriting the spirited letters of Kartini to her pen friend Stella Zeehandelaar in The Netherlands.
Presenting two installations, one with the women’s identity hovering on a texted background and the other with only their opulent clothing as decorative elements to the men’s figures, complementing each other, the installations became a wordless but powerful narrative of transformative gender hierarchy. Whilst still a futuristic dream at the time, Abednego Trianto’s work shows the changing spirit of the time, and like Kartini, who once dreamt of seeing it happen when she would wake up in a hundred years from then, a transformation of gender hierarchy is already in progress, albeit at a slow and gradual pace.
Born in 1988 in Semarang, Abednego Trianto Kurniawan received his Bachelor of Architecture (cum laude) from the Catholic University Soegijapranata in Semarang and his BFA (Bachelor of Fine Art) with Honours from the Photo and Digital Imaging School of Art and Media at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
Abednego works as an architect, artist, and documentary researcher whose future projects include topics like the development of science, the outbreak of epidemics, and the evolution of landscapes during the colonial time in Java.
It will be interesting to follow Abed Trianto’s further revelations.
Carla Bianpoen, 16 April 2024