Contemporary Indonesian Art That Gets Under Your Skin

Jakarta - Fajar Sugeng, or Maze, is calm, friendly and polite, quick with a smile and always ready to laugh. He enjoys smoking cigarettes with friends while sitting in front of his tattoo studio, Larasati, in Kemang, which he recently opened with a fellow tattoo artist.

Inside the studio, a low wall separates the small entrance from an area where the tattoos are drawn on the customer`s bodies. There is a cot, with two pillows, for those getting tattoos. In boxes, shelves and cabinets, Maze has stored all the equipment he needs for the job: fresh needles, bottles of ink in different colors and a small silver tattoo machine that holds the needle and is able to control needle depth and speed.

The walls of the studio have become colorful canvases for Maze`s artwork, with a painting of a curvy blonde in a tight bikini on one side, a traditional wayang puppet on another and a third wall for Maze`s graffiti art, his other passion.

When he was younger, Maze used to spend his nights putting up graffiti on walls around Jakarta.

“I don`t do that anymore,” Maze said. “I focus on the legal spots now, like in Senayan or Panglima Polim, where they have small parks and arts centers. That way, I am more relaxed and have more time.”

Maze has also worked with several agencies that have used his graffiti in advertisements for clothing, cellular phones and cars.

As a graffiti artist, Maze has established a reputation that has spread beyond the country`s borders. Sometimes, foreign artists come to Indonesia and request a graffiti jam session.

“I have met artists from the US, France and the Czech Republic,” he said.

When asked if he sees himself as a tattoo artist or a graffiti artist, Maze hesitated: “Well, I was interested in drawing and graffiti first,” he said, “but tattoos and graffiti are two very different things. When I do graffiti, I feel great passion and enjoy myself, it gives me energy.

“Making a tattoo, however, is a bigger responsibility, because my customers will carry their tattoos for the rest of their lives, and I need a lot of patience and concentration to make sure everything`s right. I`m also painting on someone else`s skin, not on a cold wall. It feels totally different.”

Originally from Surabaya, East Java, Maze moved to Jakarta to study fine arts. He befriended a tattoo artist who had a studio called Bliss in Radio Dalam, South Jakarta, and spent a lot of his free time there, hanging out and learning how to make tattoos.

“At the time, I didn`t have any intention of becoming a tattoo artist myself or even of having any tattoos myself,” said the 30-year-old, who now sports six tattoos. “That changed when I was sentenced to four years of prison.”

Maze was reluctant to speak about the reasons for his conviction and didn`t want to dwell on his past. But he did say that while he was in prison he needed money to pay for food, cigarettes, his phone bills and, most important, for his parole.

“In order to survive in prison, you have to have money. So I started to do tattoos,” he said. “My first clients were the other inmates. That is how I earned my money.”

After he was released in December 2005, Maze decided to become a tattoo artist, but it was a rocky start. He had to freelance at first as he didn`t have his own studio. He could only afford to buy his own tattoo machine, the needles and just three colors to work with: black, red and yellow. People who were interested in getting a tattoo would call him, and he would go to their homes to do the work.

“After a while, in 2008, I was offered a place as a resident artist in a tattoo studio, also located here in Kemang,” he said. “Then I was invited to participate in a tattoo convention in Singapore where I also found some new customers.”

“They paid me in dollars,” he said, smiling. “When I had saved up enough money, I opened up my own studio last June.”

Maze named his tattoo parlor after his 2-year-old daughter, Larasati. He said that Kemang was a good place to start a business, since it was a popular and busy district, making it easy to find new clients, both male and female.

“Some of them already know what kind of tattoo they want, others come here, still confused, and ask me to draw something for them,” he said. “This is actually what I like most. It makes me happy to see someone getting a tattoo done that I specially designed.” Katrin Figge

Source: http://thejakartaglobe.com

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