Sanggar Bumi Tarung, Studio that Fights against Oppression

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Amrus Natalysa and a number of students from the Indonesian Academy of Fine Arts (ASRI) established Sanggar Bumi Tarung, an art studio, in mid-1961. Aside from Amrus, veteran artists include Djoko Pekik, Ng Sembiring, Isa Hasanda, Misbach Tamrin, Kuslan Budiman, Sutopo, Adrianus Gumelar, Sabri Djamal, Suharjiyo Pujanadi, Harmani, and Haryatno.They built the studio on a place that used to be a lime klin, across from ASRI’s campus, which is now the Jogja National Museum.  

Amrus, 80, said he and his friends established Bumi Tarung to uphold the principle of 1-5-1 as the basic guideline in creating art. This was the People’s Cultural Institute’s (Lekra) principle when creating art, which is placing politics as the commander of the five basic combinations of work: expanding and escalating, high quality ideology and art, good traditions and revolutionary modernity, individual creativity and mass wisdom, plus social realism and revolutionary romantics. Stepping down (from the social scale) or ‘turba’ is necessary in order to uphold this principle. Therefore, members of Bumi Tarung must also be members of Lekra. 

Bumi Tarung reject abstract art and chooses to uphold revolutionary realism. Their pieces mostly highlight issues about laborers and farmers. 

"Only intellectuals or the upper class are able to understand abstract paintings while most of the Indonesian people are still poor and uneducated," said Amrus. 

When Bumi Tarung held its first exhibition in 1962, Amrus displayed a painting entitled Tangan-tangan yang Agung (The Mighty Hands) about laborers portraying a capitalist system that turns humans into robots. The theme of farmers was seen in paintings entitled Peristiwa Djengkol(Djengkol Incident), Melepas Dahaga di Mata Air yang Bening (Quenching Thirst with a Clear Spring), and Mereka yang Terusir dari Tanahnya (Those Who Were Evicted from their Land). Three of these paintings portrayed farmers who were victims of a feudal system. 

The existence of Bumi Tarung once triggered a polemic, specifically due to its radical and harsh artwork. Their pieces were often laden with messages of how farmers and laborers fought against oppressors. 

Its most outstanding piece was a wood relief entitled Bojolali by artist Kusmulyo. The relief had an engraving of a number of farmers carrying and raising sickles in a battle against the "village’s seven demons" – a term used by the Barisan Tani Indonesia (BTI), a mass farmers’ organization, to describe the seven enemies of farmers. 

TEMPO TEAM