Built as powerfully as the tree trunk he’s in the process of sculpting, Nyoman Lamun carefully carves a likeness of Sita nestled in the wings of a garuda. With each chisel tap, the princess of the Ramayana is further exposed.
Nyoman is one of hundreds of sculptors living in the village of Pakudui just north of the Ceking rice fields who carve the history of the mythological eagle from the epic Hindu poem, which is Indonesia’s national symbol.
So important is sculpting garuda to the hamlet in the hills above Ubud that 90 per cent of its inhabitants are employed in the craft. Some carve, some sand, polish or paint the finished carvings of garuda and the poem’s central characters, Rama, Sita and Vishnu.
A man of few words, Lamun says he and most men in the area learned to carve in the early 1980s under the tutelage of a fellow villager, I Made Ada. The community began to carve garuda following a visit to Pakudui by then-president Suharto.
The works of 67-year old Ada have been collected by three Indonesian presidents and can be seen in the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg and the Kremlin in Russia.
“Suharto was here in 1981,” Ada says. “He ordered more than 100 garuda statues for the palaces. I taught 75 villagers to sculpt in order to complete the work.”
In recognition, Pakudui was renamed Garuda Pakudui. Three decades later it was renamed again – Garuda Pakudui Tourism Village.
“So now we are officially a tourist village,” says Ada. “People trek through the rice fields en route to Tirta Empul in Tampak Siring, passing through Pakudui.”
Ada’s museum-cum-gallery was built 16 years ago on the advice of former president Megawati Sukarnoputri, who ordered a pair of garuda statues as a gift for Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
“She wanted Balinese statues to be housed in the Hermitage to promote Indonesia in Russia,” Ada says, adding that Megawati also thought his work should have a permanent home in Pakudui.
“She advised me to keep some of my works, not sell everything, because my sculptures are an important part of Balinese art and culture. That’s why I built this museum.” His family was no stranger to Megawati. His father, I Nyoman Kampih, had worked as a sculptor for her father, Sukarno, one of the country’s founding fathers.
“Sukarno was a collector and had my father’s works in the palace, so Ibu Mega knew of me from her father. She knew we were a family of carvers,” Ada says. As a child he has a brief encounter with Sukarno.
“He passed by me at the temple, patted me on the head and asked if I was cold after bathing at the tirta empul [water temple]. He had his baton under one arm, as he always did.”
Ada and the villagers crafted garuda from teak, jackfruit and sawo (sapodilla). Often more than three metres tall, the works are both an expression of the power of garuda and the breathtaking skill of the artisans.
With his newly sharpened chisel, Lamun whittles away filament-thin shavings as he works on the garuda and Sita. It can take three sculptors almost two years to trim, form and sand the characters hidden within the grain.
This source first appeared on The Nation Life.