Kartika's Garden

In Kartika’s garden,

verdigris spreads amidst secreted mortars,

tender leaves graced by sundering sun,

shadows deep, mysterious,

Jasmine perfumes,

dried fronds of woven attap

meld intentions of man/nature.

Indonesia's premiere artist, Kartika Affandi-Koberl (1934 - ), is the daughter of South East Asia’s foremost Expressionist painter, the late Affandi Koesoema (1907-1990). Her artistic career developed from 1957, when she first took up a paint brush, but later abandoned in favour of a more direct approach of putting colour on canvas - straight from the tube using her fingers. Since her father’s departure in 1990, Kartika has taken up the reigns of her father’s museum - The Affandi Museum which resides at Jalan Laksda Adisucipto, Yogyakarta, on the island of Java, Indonesia, caressing the Gajah Wong River by its western bank. Kartika remains the Chairperson of the Affandi Foundation.

In March this year (2017), Java, once called The Garden of the East (by Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore, 1897), had a propensity to rain. On one typically sultry day in Yogyakarta (the cultural capital of Indonesia), I, quite unexpectedly, met Kartika Affandi-Koberl (aka Kartika, or Kartika Affandi).

 I had wearied of that strip of consumerism called Jalan Malioboro, its dubiously helpful males soliciting us to see their batiks, the over enthusiastic (again) males requesting us to use their becak (cycle rickshaws), or their definitely unspeedy, but perhaps a shade romantic, andongs (horse drawn carriages), pulled by less than romantic emaciated horses. True to our proposed schedule (which had been hastily drafted in Malaysia), we grabbed a GrabCar and tootled off to the Affandi Museum. It was, ostensively, to talk with Susan (secretary) about arrangements to visit with Kartika Affandi, later in the week.

Having marvelled at the first gallery and, when approaching the second gallery, I saw in the distance an explosion of sartorial colour which could only have meant one thing, or rather one person - Kartika Affandi, beloved Indonesian colourist. The closer I got, the more it appeared that she was in a meeting at the open air Cafe Loteng. That oasis was blessed by a scattering of frangipani flowers and, more importantly, shaded. By the time I had sauntered over to that cafe, our eyes had locked. I had an internal dilemma. While I deemed it rude not to, briefly, introduced myself, I also worried about intervening upon her meeting. Grabbing the metaphorical bull by the non-existent horns, I introduced myself then quickly exited after confirming our Friday meet. I resumed my wandering around Kartika’s father’s museum, safe in the knowledge that I would see Kartika later in that week.

Then, as is the way when you are busy, suddenly it was Friday. My stay on Java was nearly over.
I called, yet again, for a GrabCar. It arrived within minutes. Starting off, there appeared to be a dispute regarding Kartika’s address. I wrangled with the driver. It eventuated with some warming debate, about price, and with me leaving the GrabCar in favour of a local taxi driver who did seem to know where he was going. The broken journey resumed.

I was led through the Javanese countryside heading towards the foothills of Gunung Merapi (Merapi Mountain), easing past verdant rice padi, cool in our urban taxi. In watery fields I witnessed smiling women, their ‘caping’ (bamboo conical hats) shading them from the undoubtedly punishing heat, their feet firmly planted in fecund, pastoral, soil.

Discovering Kartika Affandi’s Indonesian residence had not been easy. The Yogyakarta inner-city taxi driver, had stopped frequently to enquire directions of puzzled local men standing, scratching their heads. Eventually we resorted to calling Kartika's secretary at the Affandi Museum, then apprising said driver of Kartika's house's location. I carefully crossed my sun-dried fingers as I did so.

And yet, despite minor setbacks, journeying the Javanese countryside had been a sheer delight. The pastoral greenery was luxuriant, plentiful and reminiscent of Kedah, which according to TripAdvisor was the rice bowl of Malaysia. The Indonesian sky was blue, with just a mere hint of the rain to come. I had become gently lulled by miles of rural splendour, and the small enterprises called warung kopi (coffee lean-toos) where local (mostly) men drank provincial unfiltered coffee, smoked sigaret kretek (clove cigarettes) and perhaps dreamed garuda dreams. 

Brakes squealed suddenly. We slowed almost to a stop. There, down a small lane, a sign caught the driver’s eye. He quickly swung the car through a gateway I had not realised was there. Birds, aware of difference in their milieu, loudly twittered in leaf-girded trees. The taxi driver, sensing journey’s end, mentally rubbed gleeful hands at the fee he was to collect. My wallet thinned as we stepped into what appeared to be a lush park. It was the residence of Javanese artist Kartika Affandi.

A quick glance from my overawed, heat-dry, eyes had told me that, within Kartika’s lavish landscaped gardens, lay numerous traditional Central Javanese buildings. Those examples of Java’s architectural heritage peeped between trees and luscious bushes. The buildings had been translocated to Kartika’s site, and were in the process of preservation and conservation. They formed part of an open air museum, which had been designed by Kartika and displayed for the delectation of Kartika’s house guests, and other visitors.

Kartika had recently built her Museum Perempuan Indonesia “Kartika” (Kartika’s Indonesian Women’s Museum) galleries, adjacent to the conserved buildings. Those galleries shone with art, not just from Kartika herself, but from other Indonesian female artists too.

Kartika's son-in-law, slim, tall, Mommi (aka Budi Utomo), dressed in green shirt with Keith Herring type pattern in white, met us as the taxi reversed and exited. Kartika turned from where she was painting a lotus, near vases of freshly cut torch ginger, heliconia and hanging Balinese masks, raised her eyes from her vocation and raised her voice in greeting, giving an expansive, welcoming, smile as she did so. Her eyes sparkled with radiant bon homme. It truly felt like a homecoming, Kartika mother, or grand mother, for she was both in her family.

Kartika’s house had a very shady veranda under which she likes to paint. It is constructed from local wood, thatched in places with attap. All around we witnessed carvings, intricate filigree wood patterns practically hidden behind black wooden totemic figures stretching from floor to ceiling. Heavy chairs, similarly of hard wood, shared space with dark wood-constructed benches, lengthy enough to accommodate a recumbent westerner, or so I discovered. In the evening, all was delicately lit by bulbs shaded by rattan lampshades. The whole was an elegant mix of ageless rural idyll, melded with contemporary convenience.

Kartika’s lush habitat was undoubtedly welcoming. Purple orchid, white jasmine and lilac wisteria hung or flounced as we approached Kartika’s wheelchair ramp - a Gaudiesque mosaic, guarded by a terracotta orang-utan statue. That ramp, as curvaceously serpentine as its sister in Barcelona’s Parc Guell, guided us through the morning heat to where Ibu (mother) Kartika was painting that sublime lotus.

Mommi, himself a painter and de facto curator of Kartika’s museum, had been charged with the task of guiding me around those extensive tropical grounds. Along a grey (rather than yellow) brick path, which was at times tinged with verdigris, a whole host of equatorial flora surrounded me. Taking my cue from W. H. Davies (poem Leisure) it became all too easy to meander, dawdle, take my delight along that intriguing path to Kartika's recently built museum. Doing so, I witnessed large wooden cartwheels propped beside large discarded granite mortars, perhaps intended to grind rice. They nestled adjacent to serene seeming ponds, housing golden carp, which occasionally flashed breaking the stillness. Silent statuary, exotic and erotic, warily peeked from under copious green bushes. Carved totems weathered sundering heat, observing as we strolled towards galleries housing our host’s art collection.

In those grounds one open-sided building was dominated by a large, dried, natural wood sculpture, rocks piled at its base. It was an installation of painted, Balinese, volcanic river rocks, representing ancestral gods.

Mommi explained that, in 2006, Kartika had come across the work of Balinese artist Ni Nyoman Tanjung, on a visit to Bali, and insisted that some of her work be container transported back from Bali, and form a future installation as part of the Indonesian Women’s Museum Kartika. Ni Nyoman Tanjung’s work is reminiscent of, but distinct from, the late Indian Art Brut creator Nik Chand, with his rock garden in Chandigarth, India, and many intriguing images of Loa (Haitian gods and saints) discovered by DeWitt Peters in Haiti, during the 1940s. In 2012 Ni Nyoman Tanjung received a Heralds Culture award and her work seen in a permanent display in Kartika’s gardens.

Having walked those gardens, I am reminded of ancient Javanese royals having Pleasure Gardens, spoken of in epic narrative poems such as the Sumanasāntaka, where pleasure gardens were situated in the capitals of kingdoms. There is also mention of one such garden within the kingdom of the gods, in Indra’s capital. A chorus of birds, signing in the pleasure garden, awake lovers who perform their ablutions, and pray in the taman (garden). Flowers blossom in delights of feminine grace and charm, arousing hearts of lovers and of poets in those ancient gardens. Is it any wonder that Indonesia’s foremost woman artist should choose to set aside land for harbouring arbors, ponds and a lusciousness of blooms, to paint en plein air as a breeze stirs the scents and squinting eyes linger upon a blue cart, where golden symbols of fish mingle with white flowers and green leaves set against a sun yellow background.

I leveled my hand phone to capture a flight of fancy, the insect buzz momentarily silent but fish still peeping from lotus leaves in a murky lotus filled pond. Forest tree ferns exploded from containers half a man’s height, pandanas leaves shatter graceful foliage in tropical aroma. It is all balm to the senses, ointment for the eyes, lotion in scent, soothing to urban ears. Kartika’s garden is haven, not just for art, but that too. It is a veritable oasis crafted from nature to soothe weary souls, such as ours.

Inside the museum I am taken aback by the terracotta colour of the first gallery’s brick walls. No white cubes there. Kartika’s paintings seem to belly laugh or scream from the walls. Her impasto style, adding paint straight from the tube, rubbing it with her fingers, produces vibrantly expressive imagery, leaping from the walls at us, engulfing me. It becomes impossible to look at the frames, I am drawn into the images, beguiled by colour and style.

I see hosts of images of Kartika, Kartika’s family, all spread bare (literally). Some thoughtful hand, and it may have been Mommi’s, has given each painting space enough for it to be appreciated without being crowded by its neighbour. The richness of the gallery’s hard wood pillars looms above us, beside me, nature is everywhere there, windows open, doors open to stream in the light and sounds of nature, as I become immersed into Kartika’s symbolic worlds.

As I walk, approach paintings, marvel at Kartika’s abilities, I am watched. From time to time I am able to catch a Kartika effigy observing me. From the far side of the first gallery, parallel to the entrance is a wooden boat. In the boat a pink bust of Kartika, her head half skull, watches, hands clasped to her throat. She beseeches, but she also stares. She appears ever there, as we wander. Further along, another effigy, a life-size mannikin of Kartika sits in a wheel chair. At first glance you believe it to be real, thinking Kartika has come to join us, but no, it is inanimate, posed, red hat on her head, another, white hat, in her lap. It is a small installation, representing a work space replete with large wooden desk, shelves full of writing, auction catalogues, books covering everything from Chinese wisdom to Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, her novel of fragmentation and mental breakdown.

Fibreglass sculptures abound within the galleries of Kartika’s museum. Large, brightly coloured, phalluses un-erotically cavort. A four-headed sculpture of Kartika, hands over her mouth, censors herself, unable to speak of the huge penile dogs intertwined, or of the multiples of lizard heads constructed for a showing elsewhere. But my eyes are always drawn back to the power of Kartika’s paintings, her landscapes and her figure works. I feel her energy and, like Van Gogh, her lust for life. I walk off silently humming Iggy Pop, back into the garden.