Maryanto | When The Trees Fall

The rife deforestation in South Kalimantan is brought to bear in Maryanto’s black and white paintings. When The Trees Fall (2023) captures the now quotidian moment of the area. A master of the scratching technique and widely respected amongst the artist community in Yogyakarta, Maryanto undermines the romantic language of traditional landscape painting to examine socio-political structures in the physical spaces that he depicts. They act as a subversive reference on historical books published during the colonial period, where the Dutch Indies had used the natural landscapes to promote the beauty of Indonesia as propaganda.

During Maryanto’s time in South Kalimantan, he also learned of the illegal logging operations taking place. He encountered a group of loggers from the local community there, who shared the constant perils of timber theft. While it has not reached the customary forests of the indigenous people, it remains a potential threat that they have to mitigate. Locals are actively fighting for the recognition of these forests in order to gain legal protection for them. When The Trees Fall (2023) inevitably raises the philosophical thought around the unobserved phenomenon: ‘If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?’ Though the dredging of forests in Kalimantan is discernibly felt and experienced by the locals on a daily basis, it occurs without the scrutiny of the rest of the world.

Each province in Indonesia carries their own unique saying, mostly written in antiquated vernacular. For Becoming Palm (2023), Maryanto borrows the vocabulary from ancient Borneo literature that is no longer used in modern day. “Bujur banar ruhui rahayu” loosely translates to “it is really peaceful and serene-harmonious” and can be understood as a saying in East Kalimantan to describe the serene beauty of the environment. Yet its regional symbol only features the latter words ‘ruhui rahayu’. The story behind its abridged adaptation was said to be that the region’s leader had studied in West Java (Sudan) and ‘bujur’ means ‘ass/arse’ in Sudanese.

These words are placed in stark contrast to the scenery Maryanto has depicted, which reveals the reality of the Kalimantan forests and its extensive devastation. He imitates the Mooi Indie style of painting, which was the à la mode to promote the scenic landscapes of Asia before photography was popularised and is now often seen in the national collections in Europe. It draws a connection to the Dutch colonial period that had first introduced the development of plantations, transmigration, and land ownership in Indonesia, where postcards of these scenic landscapes were often sent back home in request for more financial assistance to develop the plantations. Lamenting the irrevocable ruin of the forests in present-day, Maryanto subverts this idea as a plea for corporations to stop pumping investments to its lands. He recalls a Javanese proverb that encapsulates the struggles of the community in its earnest pursuit for tranquillity, fertility, prosperity, and nobleness: gemah ripah loh jinawi.