Cempaka Culture and Tourism: Waking Up to Dutch Painter’s Dream World

"The Recalibration of Awareness – Apr 20/21, 2012 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Old Energy, Recalibration Lectures, God / Creator, Religions/Spiritual systems (Catholic Church, Priests/Nun’s, Worship, John Paul Pope, Women in the Church otherwise church will go, Current Pope won’t do it), Middle East, Jews, Governments will change (Internet, Media, Democracies, Dictators, North Korea, Nations voted at once), Integrity (Businesses, Tobacco Companies, Bankers/ Financial Institutes, Pharmaceutical company to collapse), Illuminati (Started in Greece, with Shipping, Financial markets, Stock markets, Pharmaceutical money (fund to build Africa, to develop)), Shift of Human Consciousness, (Old) Souls, Women, Masters to/already come back, Global Unity.... etc.) - (Text version)

“… The Shift in Human Nature

You're starting to see integrity change. Awareness recalibrates integrity, and the Human Being who would sit there and take advantage of another Human Being in an old energy would never do it in a new energy. The reason? It will become intuitive, so this is a shift in Human Nature as well, for in the past you have assumed that people take advantage of people first and integrity comes later. That's just ordinary Human nature.

In the past, Human nature expressed within governments worked like this: If you were stronger than the other one, you simply conquered them. If you were strong, it was an invitation to conquer. If you were weak, it was an invitation to be conquered. No one even thought about it. It was the way of things. The bigger you could have your armies, the better they would do when you sent them out to conquer. That's not how you think today. Did you notice?

Any country that thinks this way today will not survive, for humanity has discovered that the world goes far better by putting things together instead of tearing them apart. The new energy puts the weak and strong together in ways that make sense and that have integrity. Take a look at what happened to some of the businesses in this great land (USA). Up to 30 years ago, when you started realizing some of them didn't have integrity, you eliminated them. What happened to the tobacco companies when you realized they were knowingly addicting your children? Today, they still sell their products to less-aware countries, but that will also change.

What did you do a few years ago when you realized that your bankers were actually selling you homes that they knew you couldn't pay for later? They were walking away, smiling greedily, not thinking about the heartbreak that was to follow when a life's dream would be lost. Dear American, you are in a recession. However, this is like when you prune a tree and cut back the branches. When the tree grows back, you've got control and the branches will grow bigger and stronger than they were before, without the greed factor. Then, if you don't like the way it grows back, you'll prune it again! I tell you this because awareness is now in control of big money. It's right before your eyes, what you're doing. But fear often rules. …”

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Waking Up to Dutch Painter’s Dream World

Jakarta Globe, Katrin Figge, April 13, 2010

Dutch artist Hadassah Emmerich skillfully combined abstract ornamental forms with carefully composed elements in her latest exhibition. (JG Photos/Katrin Figge)

The exhibit room, with lush paintings depicting plants, flowers and curved ornaments on the walls, exude an air of exoticism. The art on display seemed to offer an unstated promise, inviting viewers to immerse themselves into a world full of mystery, adventure and to a certain point, the unknown.

Behind it all is Berlin-based Hadassah Emmerich, a Dutch-born artist with Indonesian, Chinese and German roots. The exhibition, Exopolis-Kembali ke Jakarta (Back to Jakarta), officially opened on Saturday as the Erasmus Huis cultural center’s 40th anniversary celebration.

“Since January 2006, the Embassy of the Netherlands [in Jakarta] boasts of a remarkable work of art: a giant mural by Hadassah Emmerich, which is full of symbols, dreams and fantasies,” Nikolaos van Dam, Ambassador of the Netherlands, writes in the foreword of the exhibition catalogue.

“It always catches the eye of visitors and is the opening topic to many conversations. An exhibition of other works by Hadassah would therefore be considered the next logical step toward answering the question many viewers ask themselves. Looking at the mural, one wonders how Hadassah is developing, which themes dominate her art and whether her Indonesian roots still play a role.”

Emmerich’s unique background was definitely one of the main reasons that she became interested in the subject of exoticism. After studying in Maastricht, Antwerp and London, she participated in many group shows and also put on several solo exhibitions, mostly in the Netherlands and Germany.

“My approach to art-making is multifaceted, ranging from personal intuition to literary references and theory,” Emmerich said. “On a formal level, I combine abstract ornamental forms with carefully composed elements.

“The co-existence of different viewpoints is also how I approach ‘the exotic,’ ” she added. “I am interested to show its complexity, which cannot be merely illustrative, but to me is a mixture of references to history, pop culture, everyday life and the artists’s authentic signature.”

While the mural on display at the embassy is a colorful mix of yellow, red, white and blue, Emmerich’s works at the current exhibition are of a darker nature, with black, dark green and dark blue being the dominant colors. The artist, using a versatile combination of ink, watercolor, linocut, acrylic and charcoal most of the time, created fascinating new worlds on her canvasses.

Sometimes, these worlds seem so exuberant that it might take a while to get used to them. But once the viewer takes them in, fascination and amazement can take hold, making it hard to let go.

Curator Mella Jaarma said that Emmerich’s works seem to represent the human longing for another world. “We step into an imaginative world, sometimes inspired by dreams, which are distant from our daily reality, but that we probably need in order to survive,” she said. “Hadassah’s images relate to the human need to romanticize.”

In between all the exoticism in her dream worlds, there are drawings and paintings of animals that are much easier on the eye. There is also the face of an exotic-looking woman with darker skin tone wearing shiny earrings and flowers in her black hair — an image that resembles the well-known paintings of people and everyday life in Tahiti and Polynesia by French post-impressionist Paul Gauguin.

The similarity is no coincidence, as Emmerich’s work has been previously compared to the paintings of Gauguin and fellow post-impressionist Henri Rosseau. While such a comparison is flattering, and Emmerich definitely refers to the late 19th century painters in her work, she doesn’t like to be pigeonholed.

“When I studied in the Netherlands, it seemed that you either were a formalist painter and shut up about too much content, or a socially engaged artist, or you worked in the public space,” she said. “To me, these divisions are rather outdated. There are painters who work beyond these divisions and circuits, like Kerry James Marshall or Paulina Olowska, who I find very interesting.”

The works of Emmerich, who was named as one of the most promising women for 2007 by German glamor magazine BLVD, demands full attention. But it is certainly worth it.

According to van Dam, the exhibition also serves another purpose. “It strengthens the link between East and West,” he said. “It creates the opportunity for dialogue and provides a space for meetings with young Indonesian artists, as well as possibly inspiring Hadassah to create new works of art, and therewith new questions for us to answer.”

Erasmus Huis, which was founded in 1970 in Menteng, is now located on the grounds of the Dutch Embassy in Kuningan, South Jakarta. (Photo courtesy of Erasmus Huis)