Unseen Ubud
It’s been a month filled with uncertainty, warm sandy beaches, close contact isolations and traffic jams but i finally made it to ubud, the artist village of Bali.
It wasn’t a long trip, only a few days, but long enough to get a feel for what had happen over the years, for better and for worse. With day and night rain, navigating the misappropriated sidewalks and dodging the souvenir vendors calls to come into their stores was tiresome and strangely familiar. The tourism model of the 90s still alive in well in this creative mecca of Bali.
Behind the decaying shopfronts typical of the tropics, decades of accumulated tourism wealth easily seen in the stone gates of the family compounds recently reappropriated and remodelled into great value homestays. The stone carvings and adornments fully showcasing the artistic talents the region is known for. Almost impossible to fully appreciate thanks to the weird dance of close quarter traffic dodging and motorbike tango that are roads in Ubud.
The doorway to NEKA Gallery
Detail
Having said this, being in Bali is already an exercise in creative humility but Ubud is where you come to really demolish your artistic over-confidence. The “mass produced” souvenir artwork is enough to reassess western standards of excellence but the hundreds of galleries and collections that can be discovered really test your resolve. For me, it gave me clarity and a kick in the pants to up my game.
Balinese art has always been what set the tone for me when I pictured being in Bali. It formed a large part of the mental image that I had about what it was to be Balinese. It is how I imagined my ancestors lives were like, the nature, the villages, the everyday life of Bali before tourism, before the tangle of powerlines and the “bloody cold Bintang’s”.
Classic
Classic canvasses filled with details, some in vibrant colour ands others in masterful black and white. Clean lines and perfect gradients. The shapes and compositions sing and flow, the chaotic melodies of the gamelan imprinted into the scene or the flittering of the bamboo flute guiding the heart of long lost artists. This sonic ethereal quality a long-pained goal of mine.
Then more modern works chomping heavily on the best of the west. Raw individualism less seen in the more culturally focussed traditional pieces, showing the depth of todays Balinese personality. Both an amazing achievement considering its spawning from born talent over formal training. Generational knowledge passed from father to son or pure calling, resisting the paradoxical discouraging of art as a profession in modern Bali.
After a few rainy days and not being able to access as much art as I wanted to, it was time to leave ubud for this time. But it’s ok because as I travel around Bali glimpsing into the shops, cafes and villas I catch sparks of this artistic genius everywhere. In the shrines, the temples, the lobby’s of hotels and even in the modern branding of humble businesses, it is everywhere. I just hope I can be apart of this legacy before my time is done.