Wayang, traditional indonesian puppets

Wayang and Fine Art

Wayang is one of the form of culture which contain all the material of art. Mostly wayang included puppets as a main thing in a performance, in 2 dimensions or 3 dimensions. As we all know, in wayang we may find others art such as batik which is used as the cloth of each character, and also keris as weapon. From these two things; batik and keris, if we’d like to, we can learn so many things. Other supportive components are gamelan as backsound music, Javanesse verses as song sang by sinden (javanesse singer), and so on. All of them are combined to be one complex shadow puppet performance.
In fine art itself, wayang always grows. Start from wayang beber, wayang kulit, wayang golek, and many other kinds. In this performance, I focus on wayang kulit or shadow puppet. Wayang kulit has quality of form in stylizing and deformation which is unique.
Even on its stylizing technique, it symbolized each character which is performed.

Idea Concept of Wayang Rajakaya

From many kind of puppet I know, I try to exploring wayang. This activity was on going for several years. Based on my study, I, as the creator of fine art, I am demanded to be more creative and innovative. Then, I have an idea to combine two kinds of wayang; wayang kancil and wayang kulit purwa.
Wayang Kancil is known for animal characters and fable at its story. In this wayang, all the character are actual animal. For example the cow, in wayang kancil we will find an exact shape of cow with four legs, and the colour which is paint the character of the puppet will be the exact colour of a cow. While in Wayang Kulit Purwa which included as ideoplastic, that is showed as the exact human in leather puppet; human has two legs, two arms, two eyes, and so on.
Based on my study, I exploited the idea concept of form, to combine two basic ideas mentioned above. I combine a fable story, which characters are animal, however on its form I use ideoplastic idea which is used in Wayang Kulit Purwa. This puppet I create is so called as ‘Wayang Rajakaya’. In Javanese rajakaya means animals farm. In this puppet, there is no specialization of figure (good character of bad character) for it is based on its own animal’s character. Beside that, all figures has important role based on its own animal behaviour. They will try to get free from human as exploiter of their live in this world. They are wondering about what human does to them with genetic technologies. They are scared that their live controlled by human.
Taisersdorf, 4th May 2008 Herlambang Bayu Aji