Davina: A refreshing look at changing times in Bali.

It has been 60 years now since Bali was “discovered” by foreigners. Their approach is usually aesthetic and exotic. They appropriate images of the island and make it an object of consumption apart. They thus prevent Bali’s visual discourse from entering into recognition. Davina Stephens belongs to a generation of painters which is shaking this stilted image of the island. She never “discovered” Bali. Bali was instead inbred in her. Born a New Zealander and the daughter of a hippie from the happy ’70s, she spent the key years of her childhood, between 6 and 12, in Kuta, attending the ceremonies on the beach and going to school with the young Balinese. To her there was never real meaning in the word exoticism, nor was there a perceived conflict between tradition and modernity. There is simply life and its changing ways and surroundings. This daughter of Kuta, this witness of the new, global Bali, is now exhibiting her works for one month from Sept. 21 to Oct. 28 at the Ganesha Gallery of the Four Seasons Hotel in Jimbaran. Bali, golf courses, beach boys, Western tourist peddlers, Coca-Cola — she is presenting the Bali no one wants to see, the changing Bali.

These observations have been made possible by Davina’s particular mix of personal experience and talent. She has not only resided in Bali. She went to high school in India before studying design in New York. She now regularly visits France where she has held several exhibitions. Not yet 30 years old, she has no identity crisis. The world which was her childhood playground is now her home. One day she may be drinking wine in a Parisian café, the following day at the beach with Balinese friends, and then in India attending a Kathakali. And she does this naturally, her curiosity being existential rather than abstract and intellectual. She is a traveler and artist of a new global world, which she not so much questions as grasps. This easy-going approach to life inspires all her works. She never wanted to express herself within the framework of contemporary art. She started her career in a humble way, by making textile designs, manipulating forms and colors, without having to deal with the avant-garde question: how to be new. Her first paintings were inspired by the flowers, feathers and other decorative objects she used in her textiles. Then she started painting cars, Harley Davidsons, and other individual objects from her Kuta background. And suddenly, two years ago, it was the contrasts and changes of the world around her which came to the tip of her brush.

First Bali, where she still spends most of her time; then France, India, the States, and all of the places she visits now and then. Davina paints spontaneously, from the heart, in a manner that reminds us of Pop Art, near figuration, naïve art and a gentle compassion. She owes nothing to any of these though. If there is a debt, it is indirect and probably owes more to comic books and the flat colors of the Balinese paintings than to any Western artist or school. Davina’s exhibit comprises both watercolors and oil paintings. She is by far much freer in the use of oil. Her watercolor pieces are often drab-colored and tend to focus on decorative topics such as beach scenes and ceremonies. Her oil paintings, however, are both alive in color and complex in composition. Paradise in One ’98 thus presents both the clichés and the reality, matter-of-fact in a non-judgmental way. Legian Beach Cottages 1970s: Two youths surfing while a third one is drowning among modern consumption objects: a mobile phone, a water bottle, etc.

Welcome to Bali is the island’s daily reality: a temple with a warung coffee stall in the background, two youths playing football in the middle, and a young surfer apparently trying to catch the attention of a nearby Western woman. Davina’s best work, and I hope a preview of the future direction of her creativity, is a reflection on the fate of the world: Global Gamble. Featuring scenes from above and in lively colors, representatives of the main human groups are gathered around a table and gambling with money, religion, nature, drugs, etc. There is even a painting representing former president Soeharto on his Harley Davidson together with Arafat, Habibie, and a Balinese priest, the latter too riding a motorbike. The painting was made before the fall of Soeharto though. Therefore it is non-committal. Davina is still just at the start of her career. The casualness of her unburdened nature adds to her strong, natural sense of color and promises to make her a significant artist with an original message. If there is something she should be wary of, it is “naïve art,” for there is an important market in it, and with which her manager shows some similarity both in the subjects chosen and in the finish of the works.

The artist is far from naïve, however. She knows, even if it is intuitive, what she sees and represents. And what she sees with her open, spontaneous eyes is a transient, multicultural world in which people communicate with each other mainly by exchanging things or going places rather than by exchanging ideas. She is an early witness to the coming of the post-modern world. She also gives a truer depiction of present-day Bali than all of her Balinese contemporaries, most of whom either continue seeing themselves through the eyes of tourists, when they don’t avoid figuration altogether, or refuse to face the reality of their changing island. Davina would be a good example to demonstrate that foreigners still have their say in Bali, if she were really a foreigner. As her life and works testify, she is as much Balinese as any Balinese painter and peasant. She is the forerunner of a new, multicultural identity and art.