Can you hear the image speak? Primitivism, imagespeech, and audienceship

Abstract

This paper proposes ‘imagespeech’ as a conceptual framework to discuss the political relationship between visual representation and distribution of voices that produce structures of (in)visibility and (in)audibility within the art historical legacies of colonialism, modernism, and nationalism. In particular, it explores the biography, materiality, and audienceship of Citra Irian (Image of Irian) – a series of artworks made between 1975 and 1985 by Sunaryo, who claims that his work resembles ‘primitive lines’ of Papuan material cultures and conveys the spiritual forces of Indonesian nationalism. In 1981, an art student named Semsar Siahaan burned down one of Sunaryo’s Citra Irian sculptures as an iconoclastic happening art act. Beyond a story of dispute between two Indonesian male artists, this paper employs imagespeech to listen to the various conflicting historical voices that resound from Citra Irian to identify by whom, how, and what Citra Irian was made to say. By asking ‘who has made an image speak?’ (a historical inquiry) and ‘what can an image say?’ (a speculative inquiry), this paper aims to understand primitive images, particularly those inflected with histories of silencing and speaking out, as a multimodal field that contains the possibility of practicing democratic audienceship and the ethics of representation in the way we engage with art history.

Keywords:

• Image theory
• subaltern theory
• primitivism
• colonialism
• modernism
• nationalism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For example, the recent exhibition at the National Gallery of Singapore, Tropical: Stories from Southeast Asian and Latin American Art (2023), includes documentation of Sunaryo’s Citra Irian and Semsar’s critique. The 2017 Jakarta Biennale dedicated a room for Semsar Siahaan’s works and published a bilingual book compiling the artist’s writing titled Seni Manubilis Semsar Siahaan, edited by curator Hendro Wiyanto. Semsar’s 1981 happening art is also often cited to make a point about Indonesia’s history of exploitation against West Papua, for example in a review of Jogja Biennale 2021 which includes many works from artists from Papua; see ‘Seni Papua: Ketika para perupa muda Papua menyuarakan keresahan “terbiasa dibungkam”,’ BBC News Indonesia, 28 June 2022, https://www.bbc.com/indonesia/majalah-61951602. Space limits detailing the many blog posts about the subject.

2 In her essay ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?,’ Spivak refers to the case of Indian women who practices sati, as the material base for her theorization of the subaltern. Sati is a Hindu rite in India, in which the widow follows her husband onto the funeral pyre. Spivak discusses sati in the context of an example of the white man trying to save the brown woman from the brown man. The entanglement between colonialism and patriarchy in the ideological battlefield of ‘Eastern tradition’ versus ‘Western modernity’ creates a situation where the white man and the brown man fight over whether sati is a justifiable practice. However, in the discourse on sati, as Spivak warns, ‘one never heard the testimony of the women’s voice-consciousness’ (1996, 93).

3 See the periodization of Indonesian art history in the report of Seminar Sejarah Seni Rupa Indonesia (‘Indonesian Visual Art History Seminar’), 22 June 1956. The influential book Art in Indonesia (1967), by Claire Holt, also adheres to this hierarchical spatio-temporality.

4 For an excellent account of contemporary Indonesian racial discrimination against Papuans and its deep impact on Papuan people in their everyday life, see Ligia Judith Giay (2019). Giay’s writing was congruent with a wave of protests by Papuans and people who are in solidarity against racial injustice that started in 19 August 2019 in various cities across Indonesia. The protest was a mass reaction after a video spread on social media showing some racist slurs of mobs shouting ‘Monkey!’ in front of a Papuan student’s dormitory in Surabaya.

5 For discussions about how the decolonial spirit of Third World and non-alignment solidarity failed to acknowledge the ongoing colonialism in Papua, see Hermawan (2016).

6 A shorter version of this article was first commissioned for a book project that aimed to commemorate the establishment of an intergovernmental organization, which cannot be named due to a contractual, non-disclosure agreement.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Brigitta Isabella

Brigitta Isabella is a researcher of art history, critical theories, and cultural studies. She is a part of a research-action group, KUNCI Study Forum & Collective in Yogyakarta and serves as the co-editor of Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia. She is a lecturer at the Faculty of Visual Arts in Indonesia Art Institute, Yogyakarta.