East-West Center

Arts & Performances

WHAT'S NEW

The East-West Center Arts Program presents:

Exhibition: September 25, 2011 - January 8, 2012

Curated by: Michael Schuster
Consultants: Maya Soetoro-Ng, Bronwen Solyom
Exhibition design: Lynne Najita

S. Ann Dunham (1942-1995), President Barack Obama’s mother, is recognized for her outstanding work in anthropology which focused on the small craft industries in village Indonesia. Some of her research was carried out while she was an EWC graduate student fellow in the 1970s. Her devotion to social and economic development was evidenced by her pioneering work in the field of microfinance and gender equity. Her anthropological research helped shape policies set by the institutions she worked with in Asia, including the Ford Foundation, USAID, the Asian Development Bank, and BRI, the oldest bank in Indonesia.

This exhibition includes photographs taken during her years of field research in Indonesia as well as personal artifacts which include examples ofmetal smithing, jewelry, leather work, textiles, ceramics, and basketry made in the villages of Indonesia. Dunham’s personal art and artifact collection has been augmented by some recent purchases, in order to give wider context to her work in Indonesia. She was not only concerned with connoisseurship, she also purchased common items that reflected what people made and used.

Dunham’s interest in handcrafted work is evidenced from her early years. We include items that she herself made as testimony to her intimate involvement with process. These include an early weaving she made while pregnant with President Obama as well as needlepoint from later in her life.

This love of people’s handwork uniquely dovetailed with her profound interest in working people struggling to maintain dignity under difficult financial circumstances.When she moved to Indonesia in the late 1960s with her then husband Lolo Soetoro, she encountered an extraordinary and vibrant world of handcraft and small cottage industry.While from our present perspective much of the handwork has been transformed into tourist commodities, Indonesia (particularly Java) was and still remains a center for hand-crafted industries. At the time that Ann moved to Java, hand-weaving and hand-dyed batik were still worn on a daily basis by most people; thus she was in a position to see the continuity of many traditions that had not been erased by mass-manufacturing processes. She realized that village industries would change and both aesthetic and spiritual aspects of craft processes might change, but she believed that one way to improve people’s lives was to keep those cottage industries and crafts within their communities and yet embrace the mechanized changes.

For more details, click here to view the pdf file of the exhibit handout.

Free group tours are available to school and community groups. Performance demonstrations by top artists from the Asia Pacific are offered as well. For details contact Eric Chang (eric.chang@eastwestcenter.org; 808-944-7584).

 

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