Semar has been compared to Sir John Falstaff, the gross and funny character in William Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor and Henry IV. Many opposing traits meet in the character of Semar, who is both god and clown, inwardly refined but clumsy and Falstaffian in appearance. Semar is actually a god and the brother of Siva, king of all gods.
Semar, Petruk, and Gareng are the three great low clowns who are constant companions of the Pendawas (Skt: Pandava), the five famous hero brothers adapted from the Indian epic Mahabharata and placed in a Javanese setting. Semar is a symbol of the guardian spirit of all Javanese and perhaps the most important figure in the shadow puppet play ( wayang kulit). Key WordsĬontemporary art, fantasy, Indonesia, modernity, social reality, Southeast Asia, theater, tradition, wayang 1. All this is located within the scheme of an exhibition of contemporary art and rendered in such a way that it conveys a certain aesthetic of hybridity and bricolage. It probes the cultural contexts in which the contemporary art of Dono plays out, identifying key trajectories that help clarify the concerns of this particular articulation: the locale of Yogyakarta, the mentality of the Javanese, and the device of the puppet presentation or the wayang, which derives from the ancient epics.
This essay reflects on the practice of the Indonesian artist Heri Dono, whose exhibition in Tokyo in 2000 is the anchor.
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