Taking place in the Pullman Jakarta Central Park, Bandung's phenomenal artist Tjutju Widjaja returned with an exhibition titled “PARRHESIA”, showcasing her best paintings created during the period between 2010 and 2017. The exhibition was also a part of Pullman's on going global commitment to contemporary art.
Etymologically speaking, Parrhesia derives from the Ancient Greek word, parrhesiastes, and means “to say everything”. A parrhesiastes, someone who uses parrhesia, expresses everything they have in mind, not hiding anything and opening their heart completely to other people. Tjutju borrowed the name from French philosopher Foucault’s understanding: ‘Parrhesia is a kind of verbal activity where the speaker has a specific relation with the truth through honesty and naivety’. Being a housewife first prior to becoming a full-fledged artist, Tjutju had seen closely how the world as an entity affects children and their upbringing, how the ups and downs of their daily activity and connections to others has directly impacted Tjutju’s way of storytelling.
Her emotional state also contributed to the output of work, resulting in some containing gloomy and empty nuances, while the rest are vivid and crammed with a touch of Pop Art. In Alone #5, a figure of a little girl wearing a backpack is seen standing and watching a mysterious massive object ahead of her. Tjutju left the viewer to guess the object just as the little girl might have been doing. This is an allegory born from her concern regarding children’s unpredictable baffling world, which is currently being invaded by the incredible technological advances.
In works entitled “A Long Journey”, “Swinging Into The Future” and “Menyongsong Harapan”, Tjutju implies her optimism in the midst of her own concern regarding the future of the children. The children painted in those works are depicted as confident and relaxed, in spite of the vast and massive unknown cityscape and rocky peaks surrounding them.
While Tjutju expresses her concern and hope in such a desolate tone, she portrays children’s current world as colorful and cramped, but as the observer digs further into what she has set there, accompanying them, a message filled with angst can be clearly seen. Her close relationship with her adolescent grandson also contributes heavily in the choosing of many influential popular icons displayed. In “The Battle#1” and “The Battle #2”, Tjutju depicts the fight between good and evil represented by an old elephant chess board game versus a modern electronic gadget, both championed by many popular examples of good and evil characters. She suggests the board game ias the good force as when it is played, the player uses thought process to overcome the opponent strategically while modern games simply tell the players to mindlessly kill, destroy and dominate.
Tjutju's canons also illustrates her specific criticism of parents, either for coercing their children such as in “Too Much”, where a boy can be seen exhausted in his studies. This is also intensified by many popular icons representing our children’s world which are clearly experiencing the same kind of stress. What she suggests, in another painting named “Beautiful Mind”, is to let children immerse themselves by introducing good books.
Tjutju Wijaya invites us to empathize with children. Through her work, she wishes to inspire society, especially parents, to never stop thinking and observe the inevitable threats that their children might face in the process of growing up and becoming the next generation of adults who are also prepared and firm amidstthe ever changing tides of modernization.
