Wayang Sukuraga: Interview with Effendi

Thanks to a friend of mine in Sukabumi, Indonesia, I met this particular form of Wayang art specific to this city: Wayang Sukuraga. I got interested and found the man who created it: Kang Effendi. So, I decided to ask him directly how this idea of a very unique art was born, little known in Indonesia itself. Here is our conversation. 

A Sukuraga head

Let's start by talking about yourself. Introduce yourself and tell how and when your love for painting was born.

My name is Effendi. I was born in Sukabumi, 16 April 1958, West Java, Indonesia. I am more widely known as Fendi Sukuraga because I introduce to the public at large my work in the form of Wayang Sukuraga (Sukuraga Puppet).

Wayang is a form of performance art, while Sukuraga comes from the word “suku” which means part and  “raga” which means body. Wayang Sukuraga is a drama played by parts of body and I am the inventor and mastermind of the show.

My childhood was spent in the city of Sukabumi. When I was a teenager (eleventh grade in vocational high school), I went to Jogjakarta to look for life from playing music. Since then I have increasingly pursued art consciously and seriously until now.

I started to like drawing since I was 4 years old. I like painting, and was interested in musical instruments. The first musical instrument I wanted was kendang (a percussion musical instrument from West Java) while for drawing and painting, it started with my fondness for collecting film posters in a cinema, and redrawing the artists who became film players in the poster on my working paper. This, I think, has grown my love for painting. It all started with me liking drawing people (humans). Music and painting are a part of me and an inspiration for all my works now.

How did the idea of this very particular type of wayang come about? I read on the website that it derives from a reading of a sura of the Koran, and that Sukuraga means “parts of the body”. You tell us its origin well, even for those who don't know Indonesian wayang: explain its difference.

Wayang Sukuraga arose from a fear of mine because of the words my grandfather (Aki Udi) said when he commented on my paintings which were always human-themed. At that time my grandfather saw the painting "Portrait of Myself" in 1980, and he said, "If you paint humans, later your paintings will cost lives."

In Islam, the religion that I follow, there is a hadith narrated by Bukhari Muslim who says that “The makers of these images will be punished on the Day of Resurrection. It will be said to them: ‘Give life to that which you have created.’"

Aki Udi's explanation kept haunting my mind day and night. Because of this anxiety, I mutilated my human paintings since 1987. I made them into pieces of limbs. As time goes by, the Quran surah Yassin verse 65 (“That Day, We will seal over their mouths, and their hands will speak to Us, and their feet will testify about what they used to earn.”), strengthen my heart to end making human paintings and start to make it into layers or parts only. 

Starting from painting these parts and the verse in the Quran, I got the inspiration to make art performance from parts of the body. So I made leather puppet of parts of the body. Another striking difference with other Indonesian puppets is that while other puppet show describe conflicts between humans, Wayang Sukuraga presents an inner conflict between members of the human body so that humans are able to recognize themselves through the actions of their limbs.

Self Portrait, 1982

Are there influences from European Surrealist art or is it just a stylistic coincidence?

I will not talk about technique or influence. I will let the audience of the Wayang Sukuraga show to see for themselves. Let others to judge. I free myself and you to imagine and continue to be creative.

The first place where your Sukuraga paintings were exhibited was in 1995 in Shah Alam, Malaysia. How was this form of art received outside Indonesia?

They highly appreciated and commented that the painting that I exhibited at that time was in the form of plays (roles). Very expressive and impressive, they said.

The mastermind (dalang)

This type of art has traveled outside the borders of Indonesia, but it's still little known in its homeland. How do you explain this?

Appreciation from abroad is higher because in Indonesia I am considered "strange and eccentric". Whereas abroad, the response to something different and new is more democratic, more receptive. In addition, thoughts about the philosophical aspects, research, and the meaning behind this puppet have not been responded well, because most people when they just see it, they retreated and said, "How come, puppets are like this?" 

But I am sure that over time, with the sophistication of technology and the increasing development of the adaptive capabilities of the digital age, people can openly receive something new. In the future, Wayang Sukuraga, both visually and philosophically can be valuable and accepted. Insha Allah.

Sukuraga concert

What is Kampung Sukuraga?

Kampung Sukuraga is my dream to create a community that is mutually beneficial to one another. Social engineering in this village setting can familiarize people with getting to know themselves through the Wayang Sukuraga, to be creative in developing the art of Sukuraga and able to support himself. 

I use the term Kampung because it depicted an area inhabited by several families in houses that are warm, simple, helping each other in mutual cooperation, and occupied by people who understand each other, so as to be able to respect others and give good influence to the surrounding environment. I hope that when I am no longer in this world, other people can visit this village to be able to interact with my work.

Rumah Budaya Sukuraga

One last question: how do you view the artistic situation in Indonesia and the Sunda area?

The current situation of art appreciation in the Sundanese region is not yet encouraging. The younger generation is more occupied with everything of technology and the digital life. This is a challenge that is hard enough for artists and culturalists to be able to continue to innovate, work, and race with the challenges of the times. 

Going forward, my plan is to realize Kampung Sukuraga with a cultural center for the art of Sukuraga that now has had a puppet show room, workshop room and Fendi Sukuraga Gallery. That is the center of resources regarding Sukuraga. 

This area will later become a kind of  educational tourism (to know oneself and explore indigenous values and virtues so it becomes a blessing and give benefit to their own environment) as well as a creative economic area so that this village is able to create, produce, and live itself from whatever it has. That is all that I can say. 

Hopefully I have given an good overview about Wayang Sukuraga.

17 June 2020, from Rumah Budaya Sukuraga, Sukabumi, Indonesia.

From Wikipedia:

Wayang, also known as wajang, traditional form of puppet theatre play originally found in the cultures of Java, Indonesia. The traditional form of puppet theatre art found in Indonesia and other parts of Southeast Asia, wherein a dramatic story is told through shadows thrown by puppets and sometimes combined with human characters. The art form celebrates Indonesian culture and artistic talent; its origins are traced to the spread of Hinduism in the medieval era and the arrival of leather-based puppet arts called thalubomalata from southern India.
Wayang refers to the entire dramatic show. Sometimes the leather puppet itself is referred to as wayang. Performances of shadow puppet theatre are accompanied by a gamelan orchestra in Java, and by gender wayang in Bali. The dramatic stories depict mythologies, such as episodes from the Hindu epics the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, as well as local adaptations of cultural legends. Traditionally, a wayang is played out in a ritualized midnight-to-dawn show by a dalang, an artist and spiritual leader; people watch the show from both sides of the screen.
UNESCO designated wayang kulit, a shadow puppet theatre and the best known of the Indonesian wayang, as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity on 7 November 2003. In return for the acknowledgment, UNESCO required Indonesians to preserve the tradition. Wayang has also been a significant historical art form in Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos.

For more information, visit http://sukuragafoundation.org/ind/

Indonesian version