Tracing women artists in Indonesia (1940-1970)

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About the annotated bibliography

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Initiator

The Indonesian Women's Archives and History Space (RUAS) is a collective space for women's critical thinking, run by historians and activist-scholars. RUAS' work includes archiving that is oriented towards memory, activism practices, women's thoughts and feelings, for justice, social, political and cultural change.

RUAS defines archiving-activism as a social movement which documents movements, thoughts and feelings, as well as presenting women's narratives that are overlooked in Indonesia's mainstream history. We aim to care for and recall women's movements as a way to support social change and bring about justice as well as equality.

How to contribute to this

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Alimah

  • Setiawan, Hersri. 1999. Lekra Yogyakarta. Cultural Records.

Alimah was mentioned in Setiawan’s notes about the member of Lekra and the People’s Painting Studio (Sanggar Pelukis Rakyat) as a female surrealist painter with a modest and sharp style. Alimah and her whole body of work have disappeared after the 30th September Movement in 1965 until today.

Aty Ismangil

  • Suwaryono, Dan. 2015. Fine Arts Appreciation in Indonesia: The Essays and Criticisms of Dan Suwaryono (unpublished draft). The Faculty of Fine Arts, Jakarta Institute of the Arts.

Aty Ismangil’s name appeared on page 56. Her painting Kali Progo was discussed; its style of delicate lines was compared to Ruliyati’s painting style, which was firm, hard, and rigid.

Attika (Atikah

  • Yok, Oei Sian. “The Role of Lines in Painting”, Star Weekly, 18 July 1959.

This article made a comparison between two exhibitions – an exhibition that presented the work of “Yin Hua” painters in Tati Gallery (Prinsenpark, Jakarta) and the exhibition of seven Indonesian painters in Balai Budaya in July 1959. Water and ink, the mediums that were apparent in the “Yin Hua” exhibition, were compared to the acrylic paintings of the second exhibition. The only woman who contributed to the second exhibition was Attika. Oei Sian Yok wrote that Attika often painted flowers, even though her paintings were still not yet fully refined in the terms of technique–especially when she was painting a vase.

  • Yok, Oei Sian. “The Difference Between a Painting and an Illustration”, Star Weekly, 12 March 1960.

In this article, Atikah was mentioned as an artist from Sumedang who, in the middle of 1956, was painting for BMKN (The National Cultural Forum). Technically, in the exhibition in Balai Budaya (Jakarta), she didn’t yet have the painting skills equal to Utarjo or Yassin. Her floral painting looked clumsy and out of proportion. Her chosen colors for “Dewi Sri” also lacked harmony.

Betsy Lucas

  • Yok, Oei Sian. “The Students’ Painting Exhibition”, Star Weekly, 25 April 1959.

This was an article about a B.K.S.K.M.I’s exhibition (Indonesian Art Students Cooperation Agency) in Wisma Nusantara, which included the work of the students of Bandung Institute of Technology’s Fine Art Department and Jogja Academy of Fine Arts. Betsy Lucas’s work was mentioned as having its own style and how her lines were remarkable and subtle. She used soft colors for nature in her painting, and she drew a beautiful landscape of Bali.

Emiria Sunassa (Emiria Soenassa)

  • Unknown yet. “Talking to a Tidorean Princess about Her Hometown: Irian”, Star Weekly, 20 November 1949.

The article about Emiria opened with a telegram message from the chief of UNO (New York) that mentioned the title of the Queen Mother Emiria Soenassa Wama’na Putri Al’Alam. Her background as the princess of Tidore Sultanate was mentioned in this article, along with her journey to become a painter. And her involvement with the PKII (Independence Party of Indonesia Irian) to fight for the people of Irian. In this article, the relationship between the Tidore Sultanate and Irian was also explained.

  • Unknown yet. “Emiria Sunassa: How she came to be a painter”, The Indonesian Affairs, Vol. II No. 2. April-May 1952.

This article about Emiria was quite interesting since it was published by the Department of Information and written right before Emiria disappeared from the public. The article also mentioned a review of her work in the previous issue of the journal in 1951. The article focused on Emiria’s story as an individual and how she self-taught her art. In the article, her early interaction process with paintings with Prof. Pijper was discussed in detail – it showed Emiria’s temperamental and passionate character. Emiria was also someone with high social empathy and awareness; it was apparent from her choice to become a nurse during the revolution era.

  • Yok, Oei Sian. “The Exhibition of Four Indonesian Expressionist Painters: Emiria Sunassa, Trisno Sumardjo, Oesman Effendi, Zaini”, Star Weekly, 6 February 1960.

Emiria Sunassa was one of the Indonesian women expressionist painters that contributed her work to this exhibition. The article mentioned her short biography and that she started painting in her older age, right before WWII. Her solid exhibition in the Bataviasche Kunstkring Art Hall in 1940 garnered a lot of attention and discussion about her work. Her second exhibition was held in 1946. Among the art circles, she was often depicted as having a unique personality and was in a league of her own. She held exhibitions in Europe, the United States, India, and the Malay Peninsula. The colors in her paintings showed creative decisions and combinations that were unique, fresh, and sharp. “Kembang Matahari” (Sunflower) was one of her more cheerful works. “Terdampar” (Stranded) depicted several bodies sprawled on a dead empty ground and, in its bluish green, they looked bleak and sad.

  • Burhan, Agus. 2000. The History of Paintings in Indonesia: From Mooi Indie to Persagi (Association of Indonesian Painters). Yogyakarta: MERAPi

The writer mentioned that Emiria Soenassa got her inspiration from primitive art. She was aloud about her “anti-technique” credo: “Swing your pencil, throw away your technique”. This creative tenet was in line with Sudjojono. The article also mentioned Emiria’s background as the first Indonesian woman who explored the art of painting as a way of expression. “Kampoeng Nelajan di Teloek Roembolt”, her work in the Bataviasche Kunstkring exhibition 1941 garnered attention. As described by Sudjojono, her painting showed primitive patterns to express honest naivety. Afterward, some of her paintings were considered to resemble Van Gogh’s. Later, expressionism became much stronger in Emiria’s work; her style reached its maturity during the Japanese occupation era.

  • Arbuckle, Heidi. 2012. Performing Emiria Sunassa: Reframing the Female Subject in Post Colonial Indonesia. Melbourne: University of Melbourne.

This one was considered comprehensive research about Emiria Soenassa. In the opening of this report, Heidi wrote about Emiria’s background, making clear all of the confusion – including the claim that she was a princess of Tidore Sultanate. Emiria’s life was so colorful in numerous professions that she did. Before she disappeared from Jakarta out of the blue at the beginning of the 60s. Her story became a mystery until the end of the 90s when the public memory of Indonesia no longer remembered her.

Emiria’s disappearance from Jakarta was something you could call an attempt to erase the work of Indonesian women in mainstream art in Indonesia. With details, Heidi traced back all the materials and sources that mentioned Emiria, including people’s memories of her. Emiria was mentioned as getting married several times, even though there was not any strong evidence about it. And Emiria didn’t have any biological children. When she was alive, she adopted two kids.

No one knew why Emiria disappeared. Aside from that, Emiria was a pioneer in several fields. Heidi tried to rearrange materials and records about her and rewrite Emiria Sunassa’s life, combining it with oral narrative history, archive, and visual analysis of her work and photos. An example was a little detail from Mia Bustam about her visit to Emiria’s house at the beginning of the 40s. Heidi also interviewed people around Emiria who knew her personally. Until she finally interviewed Jane Waworuntu, who was a close friend (might also be Emiria’s distant relative) and a person who secured Emiria’s paintings until Jane died in 1998 – and those paintings were passed down to Jane’s nephew, Weir Waworuntu. After that, those paintings were kept in a store room in Tanjung Sari Hotel in Bali. They were on display in an exhibition in 1994.

Heidi tried to discuss Emiria’s positioning of female subjects in the colonial and national discourse. And also how women took their roles, in the context of themselves and spaces for women in the national art scene. Emiria became a dominant figure in the dynamic of the art scene in her early career and also a figure of another. She represented a princess and a “primitive” because of the information she didn’t have access to because she was an other. Heidi explored the discussion regarding Emiria by looking at the trace that Heidi found in Jalan Cendana. She also reinterpreted Emiria through a visual analysis of her paintings. In her conclusion, Heidi put Emiria Sunassa as a female subject and presented her persona, her political commitment, and her daily life inside a discourse of modern Indonesian culture, specifically when the colonial era would soon end. Emiria was a historical vehicle to examine how she shook the dominant narrative and destabilized the rigid truth about the state and its relation to race, class, and gender ideology. Emiria was eccentric – mysterious and unpredictable. The use of a postcolonial feminist approach was urgent to understand and retell Emiria as a whole narrative subject.

  • Low Sze We, Horikawa Lisa, Scott Phoebe (eds). 2016. Reframing Modernism: painting from Southeast Asia, Europe and beyond. Singapore: National Gallery Singapore.

Emiria was mentioned as a pioneer figure in modern Indonesian art. Her painting style showed an ideological position, as seen in her way of presenting female figures from various cultural backgrounds in Indonesia. And this made her style so different from the spirit of nationalism that was apparent in mainstream painting styles at that time.

Emiria presented another idea of nationalism in the diverse figures in her painting. Five of her painting were presented in this book: Pemanah Papua (A Papuan Archer, 1942), Bahaya Belakang Kembang Ternate (The Hidden Danger of a Ternatenese Young Woman, 1941-1946), Panen Padi (Rice Harvest, 1945), Pasar (Market, 1943), and Peniup Seruling dan Purnama (The Flute Player and the Full Moon, 1958).

  • Ika Setia Wati, Jenny. “The Existence and the Problem of Indonesian Nudist Painting According to the Feminist Lens”. Imaginarium, Vol. 1 No. 3, November 2020.

This discussed the debate and problem of nudist painting in Indonesia, which was often produced from the patriarchal perspective. Jenny interpreted Emiria’s “Mutiara Bermain” (Pearls, At Play) with a different kind of feminist approach, considering the creation time of the painting – when the Japanese oppressed Indonesian women during the occupation period, and its aftermath during the beginning era of the republic. Jenny discussed the male gaze perception from male artists that made it as if women alone couldn’t be a subject in a creative process to make a painting.

Magazine

  • Merdeka, Moyang Kasih Dewi. “Finding Emiria Again”, Majalah Tempo, 2 May 2020.
  • Merdeka, Moyang Kasih Dewi. “Finding Emiria Again”, Majalah Tempo, 2 May 2020.

Printed newspaper

  • Arbuckle, Heidi. Kompas, 12 December 2010, Emiria Soenassa Imagining the Homeland.
  • Bianpoen, Carla. Jakarta Post, 9 December 2010, Emiria Soenassa: An auspicious artist.
  • Moeis, Dantje S. Riau Pos, 9 September 2012, Indonesian Female Artists.
  • Bianpoen, Carla. Jakarta Post. 13 April 2016, Reframing Modernism in a Southeast Asian Context.

Online

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