Seruni Bodjawati’s Cultural Preservation Award for Ensuring The Continuation of Wayang in Global Contexts
Wayang
(Javanese puppet theatre) is one of the most important traditional arts in
Indonesia that should
be preserved as the cultural values are very rich. Rumah Wayang Pulangasih which has been participating and organizing conservation events for Wayang in
Indonesia conferred ‘Cultural
Preservation Award for Ensuring the Continuation of Wayang in Global Contexts’ to an Indonesian
contemporary artist Seruni Bodjawati. Previously,
Rumah Wayang Pulangasih also
conferred the awards to Bank Central
Asia (BCA), Wayang Orang Bharata, Tembi Rumah
Budaya, Sendratari
Ramayana
Open Air Prambanan, Yogyakarta Kekayon Museum, and
many more.
Seruni
who started painting at
the age of 10 months has been creating
thousands of artworks
such as drawings, paintings and films
that included
cultural values and symbolisms of
Wayang in global contexts. Her paintings have been
widely published in various national and international media and exhibited over
30 times in Indonesia,
France, Australia, Romania, Hungary, Philippines, South Korea, Italy, Germany,
USA and many more. Since last
year, Seruni and her mother
(an Indonesian senior painter, Wara Anindyah) have been making non-commercial art
films including
Wayang shows in various themes. One
of the most well-known themes is about surreal
biographies of famous figures in the world of art such as Leonardo da Vinci,
Vincent van Gogh, Frida Kahlo, Salvador Dali, Edvard Munch, Yayoi Kusama,
Michelangelo, etc.
The
art films are very
unique since they are based on eccentric ideas and visualized with
surrealistic
stories like the scenes in a beautiful dream or nightmare. The films are artistically stunning as the
filmmakers’s basic professions are painters. Their
art films have been appreciated by a lot of Asian, European, and American art
critics and have been screened in Art Point Gallery, Prievidza, Slovakia, Arte
Studio Ginestrelle, Santa Maria di Lignano, Italy, Art Gallery Le Logge Piazza
del Comune, Assisi, Italy, and will be screened
at Sunview Luncheonette, Greenpoint, Brooklyn, USA in
March 2014.
In
2012, Seruni was awarded
with
“Kartini Awards” as the Most Inspiring
Woman in Arts and Culture from
Kartini magazine and Indonesian First Lady Ani Yudhoyono since her monumental artworks have been inspiring a lot of Indonesian women. Indonesian Arts
Institute in Yogyakarta gave many awards for her paintings such as " The Best
Painting Artwork
in Dies Natalis XXVI and
XXVII" , "The Best Sketch in the Faculty of Fine Arts ", and
"The Best Watercolor Painting". She
also received “La
Femme Awards” from Leo Club Monas
(Lions Clubs International) and the honorary
titles
as " Young Indonesian
Hero " from Aplause
The Style, "
The Most Successful International Artist under 20 " from La Société des
Artistes Contemporains, France and “The Most
Talented Student with High Achievements” from Director General of Higher
Education of the Ministry of Education and Culture, Indonesia.