Mass Killing & Mass Tourism

BALINESE POLITICAL ART

‘New Gods, Old Gods’ is a political art exhibit at the Athens Institute for Contemporary Art (ATHICA), in Athens, Georgia, USA.  It showcases the work of Balinese artist I Made Bayak Muliana, who was visiting from Bali.  Bali is an island in the Indonesian archipelago, now heavily favored by non-Indonesian tourists, retirees and surfers from places like Australia, China, the U.S. and Japan. This is what happens to a place that has been declared ‘paradise.’

History in a Painting, Layer by Layer

Made Bayak’s work references the mass killings of Communists, leftists, ethnic Chinese and ‘critical thinkers’ in 1965 by the Indonesian military and their militias, with support from the U.S.  Between 500,000 to 1 million were slaughtered, though some estimates run as high as 3 million.  The U.S. government under Dean Rusk provided ‘kill lists’ for the military, along with backup support from U.S. troops in nearby Vietnam and Subic Bay, the Philippines.

This slaughter eliminated the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and led to an Indonesia tightly controlled by a three decade-long right-wing dictatorship under Sukarno’s successor, Suharto.  These massacres had a lasting effect.  They cleared the way for the present economy of mass tourism in Bali, eliminating any social forces that would question this kind of development.   For instance, Communist women’s groups were liquidated, who would have opposed homes being leveled for hotels. The issue of mass tourism forms the second inspiration of Made Bayak’s artistic work. 

Mass tourism is now displacing the Balinese and making parts of the island unaffordable through the familiar process of gentrification.  It has taken land away from farmers and fisherman and has put the island ‘up for sale’ to the highest bidder.  It also has an environmental effect.  The tourist industry dumps tons of garbage, depletes the water supply, damages the mangroves, while the building of hotels and retirement homes reduce forest cover.  Indonesian and foreign investors are now planning to build an artificial tourist island in the most beautiful bay in southern Bali near the largest city of Bandung.  This tourist Disneyland is a focus of an oppositional ‘Bali Not For Sale’ movement which Made Bayak is a member of.

Made Bayak learned nothing about the 1965 mass killings in his Indonesian school, and only later did he talk to survivors who remembered it.  He has a series of excellent small pictures depicting life in an Indonesian prison as described by one of these survivors.  One of his large canvases contains elements of Balinese history – the arrival of the first tourist ships in the 1920s, the bloody 1965 slaughter and the modern dredging and construction damaging the Balinese environment in the present.  Another presents a pastoral tourist scene of rice fields, peasants, bamboo, palms and mountains, with the word ‘Sold Out’ over it, with black skyscrapers punching the sky, surrounded by demons and skulls.

Made Bayak works in acrylic paint on canvas, partly because it dries quickly and its colors are vibrant, while breathing oil paint fumes is smelly and can be toxic.  He uses traditional Indonesian Hindu colors - red, black and white - and Hindu cosmological figures to tell some of the stories depicted in his works.  Large long-tongued red demons, gods, dragons and witches populate some pictures and tell part of his stories.  

Mass Killing in Bali 1965

In a live performance, the artist covered a map of Bali with the words “For Sale” plastered across it and covered another map with the words “Mass Killing” all over it.   He also has a series of works, not shown at the Exhibition but in a booklet called “Plasticology – Trashed Island.” He uses plastic waste picked up in Bali and its surrounding waters to create sculptural art.  This art references his concern for the Balinese environment, which is being choked by plastic, some of which is the product of the tourist economy.

In a discussion, Made Bayak pointed out that many of the things happening in Bali are happening all over the world – gentrification, over-tourism, uncontrolled waste, destruction of environments, displacement of people, privatization of land, deforestation and the crushing of any opposition.  Mass tourism can be seen in Barcelona, Venice, Amsterdam, some Caribbean ports, Dubrovnik, the Taj Mahal, Italy’s Cinque Terre, Maya Bay in Thailand, the Great Wall of China, Kyoto, New Zealand, Iceland and anywhere large tourist ships dock.  Even Mount Everest, where the trash and bodies are piling up. 

At present, political art in the U.S. is for the most part invisible, a sidelight to the emphasis on ‘personal expression’ or marketability alone.  This is similar to Bali, where most ‘art’ is the creation of idyllic landscapes for tourists.  This exhibition breaks through the taboo that art should only be about decoration in style, method, color or personal individuality.  That it should be more than ‘arts for arts sake.’  It points to the wider social issues the world is facing, as the ‘old gods’ of life are being replaced by the ‘new gods’ of profit and capital.

Made Bayak has websites here:  https://madebayak.wordpress.com/  and here:  http://madebayak.com/about/

The Kulture Kommissar

April 4, 2018