Through My Eyes, six and a half years living in Bali : Jenny Ashby

Living in Indonesia over the last 6 and a half years, has been an experience I will always cherish yet one that has left me with many questions regarding who I am, where I belong, my place in a society living as an outsider, a “bule” in culture and society that was far from my hometown roots of Country NSW.

My artwork is a response and contemplation to my time living in Bali, travelling through Indonesia and spending time with my Indonesian husband’s family in West Sumatra. Living in Indonesia has given me the opportunity to study and learn the history of Indonesia and its unique and diverse culture and religious diversity that plays an important role in everyday life and politics, especially in Bali with its concentrated focus on the Hindu religion.

During my time as an artist living in Indonesia my focus was not on the beauty, nostalgia, pomp and ceremony and glitz and glamour,that has been depicted bymany expat artists before me, such as Walter Spies, Arie  Smit, Donald  Friend and Rudolf Bonnet to name just a few.   My drawings on paper have focused on the reality that is before me.  My focus was on the workers, the fishermen and fish mongers, the domestic maids, the women who work on construction of villas, the stone gathers, the boot makers etc. and their everyday life as well as the ugly and darker sides to life. My sketch book was my learning and understanding and responding to reality, the hardships of people who are behind the scenes of the prosperous tourist industry, the people who live on menial wages to provide the services and needs for the tourist industry to exist, yet are not acknowledged.

My work also touches on issues that were dear to my heart and issues that were hard to speak about as a “bule”, such as the mass slaughter of the native Bali dog due to the panic of the rabies virus.  This issue was heart breaking as I witnessed the mass killings and dumping of dogs and the bodies of dogs that I knew well, that were healthy and vaccinated washing up on the beach in the mornings near where I lived. My drawings were my way of getting out my anger, sadness and frustration, a way of personally saying what I felt without words especially after the government warned the public not to intervene or protest the mass killings.

Living in a small fishing village on the north-east coast over the last two and a half years in Labuhan Amuk, Karangasem,  gave me the opportunity to get to know and understand the hardships of the people in the poorest area of Bali personally. Over the last two and a half years where I grew friendships with the fishermen, the farmers and the women whose lives depended on the seasons for survival. I also became friends with the old blokes who I called the “Muppets”, who gathered on the beach in the mornings gossiping and chatting about life in their villages, while waiting for the nets to come in so they could gather the discarded and stray fish from the nets to take home to their families. I grew to know these characters as well as the women who fought over the best fish and scrambled to fill their tubs, that fought and argued with the owner of the nets and boats about the prices he was charging, and afterwards rushed off to set up makeshift stalls to sell to passersby on the main road that links the north east to the south.

These people in my drawings became my life, my friends, (“some my enemies”(lol)) and my drawings helped me understand life as it is in reality, not how it is presented in the glossy tourist magazines as “destination paradise” for the tourist and traveler, but what lays beneath the surface and behind the “smoke and mirrors” presented to the unknowing and on first impressions of the façade that is marketed.