Made Wianta Exhibition: Ubud, Bali

Contemporary artist Made Wianta unveiled another aesthetic surprise with an exhibition of razors, daggers and needles piercing a hole through the illusions of a hypocritical society. The work is meant to “slash through the thin veneer of civilized society that dulls us into submission” and “to pierce through our imbecile parents, legal hypocrisies and slave-morality religions, all the scaffolding we have erected to make ourselves flaccid and drained of strength”, said the exhibit’s curator, Alexander Boldizar.

The exhibit will run until Jan. 20, 2008, at the Gaya Fusion Art Space in Sayan, Ubud.

Titled “Sharp“, the exhibit features 16 recent works of Wianta, who in the past three decades has created more than 14,000 pieces of artwork, including paintings, installations and poems.

One featured work is a large canvas studded with hundreds of razors and digital self-portraits stabbed with iron nails.

The most provocative art work on display is an arrangement of 50 large wooden penises, each pierced with a metal ring.

“I want to jolt, to shock people into re-thinking every aspect of their life — sex, intimacy and identity.

“My works are not created to give the viewer any sense of comfort; on the contrary, they will force the people to abandon their comfort zones,” Wianta said.

The effort is most evident in the exhibit’s main installation, two mattress separated by a curtain of barbed wires. Sharp pieces of glasses and broken bottles cover the surface of the mattresses and pillows, making it impossible to sleep on them.

Exhibition Review by I Wayan Juniartha