For 30 years, Indonesian artist Agus Suwage has been creating hyperstylized selfies – from caricatures of himself to his face pressed onto a dictator – to document his quest for identity amid the turmoil of the country’s recent history.
The Macan Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Jakarta is devoting an exhibition to the artist’s work – “The Theater of Me” – with more than 80 exhibits from three decades of his career.
Suwage’s self-portraits document his life as an artist, which was heavily influenced by political changes in Indonesia, such as the fall of dictator Suharto’s regime in 1998 and the hopes sparked by the democratic revival that followed.
The 63-year-old presents himself in unconventional ways and his disturbing installations play with racial and cultural stereotypes in the Southeast Asian archipelago.
The exhibition has been on hold for several years after being postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic that closed museums for months.
“During this long hiatus I had forgotten much of the process and the artworks we wanted to exhibit. So this is an important moment to rediscover, reminisce and revive the works I have made – just like meeting an old friend.” Suwage told reporters.
One of the works, Self-Portrait and the Theater Stage, has never been shown before.
Dozens of ironic or grotesque versions of the artist’s head adorn one large wall – ablaze, like a bird, a pit bull, or a kettle – to create a cynical, visual commentary on the many different faces of politics.
In Suwage’s work, “the self-portrait came from the beginning,” Aaron Seeto, director of the Macan Museum, told reporters.
“He first started doing self-portraits because he believed that you have to be self-critical before you criticize others, and also there was an economic pragmatism, he would use his own body and not have to pay models,” he said.
– Agents in a cage –
Suwage’s later installations emphasize black humor and, with their provocative nature, increasingly test public tolerance in the country with the largest Muslim population in the world.
In one, a skeleton sits in a tub of rice (“Luxury Crime”), in others, a pyramid of a thousand beer bottles is topped by a “guardian angel” skeleton, and a statue of a half-naked Frida Kahlo hangs on a cross, her body pierced by arrows.
In 1967, the Suharto regime forced the artist, who came from a Chinese-Indonesian merchant family in Central Java, to adopt a more Indonesian-sounding name from his birth name Oei Hok Sioe.
Suwage studied graphic arts in the Indonesian city of Bandung, where a photographer’s roommate captured the images he used as the basis for his early self-portraits.
In the late 1990s, he witnessed the repression of student movements and deadly riots in Jakarta, a period that would shape his artistic development.
After worldwide success – his works can be found in museums from Japan to the United States – and the rising prices of his works, Suwage is not afraid to criticize the art market.
In the 2003 series Toys ‘S’ US, he miniaturizes himself as a wire toy in various forms to explore the relationship between artist and collector and how he felt infantilized and forced into work by his surroundings in the art scene.
In his installation “Passion Play” he places life-size mannequins representing his collectors and agents in a large cage.
“Through this process of reflection since my beginnings as an artist, I have seen a close relationship between art, politics and society,” said Suwage.
It is an “exploration of memory, fear, alienation, dreams, identity and humor”.
The exhibition runs until mid-October.
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