My inspiration for this project was ‘What would you do if these crackers were real pistols?’ By F.X Harsono, which was created in 1977 as a political statement against Indonesia’s then-President Suharto’s authority. This painting spoke to me through its elements of conflict and the way its title posed a question and made me think. If I had a gun, would i make a change? and what type of change I would make? This artwork had a strong atmosphere of freedom, to express our ideas and thoughts, contrasting to the lack of freedom for people to express themselves during Suharto’s regime. There many ways of interpreting this artwork, each of them being fascinating.
I was also more personally drawn to the pistols, as pistol shooting is a sport i do competitively, and enjoy. The numbers 07 are repeated in my painting, representing the number of the pistol i usually use during training. The small circles represent the bullets I use. I created these using stamps. The colors used in the base are taken from the colors incorporated in the official artwork. With the targets, i tried to create contrast by using more bold colors as opposed to the more neutral tones of the background. The empty space across my canvas represents conflict and war, resembling a battlefield. This is my take on F.X Harsono’s artwork, a piece i hope will do justice to the original artwork as well as incorporate some pieces of myself.