Here’s Jauk Kera Putih (the white monkey) from the Setai Darma House of Masks and Puppets, Ubud. It’s good to come back to these images from last year’s Bali trip – the figures seem to inhabit a pantheon equally as rich, psychically, as the more familiar (to me, anyway) Western (i.e. the Greek). He’s another very expressive dude.
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Masks
Here’s Denawa from the Setai Darma House of Masks and Puppets, Ubud. He’s the bad guy in the Maya Denawa story. The maker is Wayan Tangguh. The mask has jewellery, real hair and mother of pearl. And as usual, they know how to do teeth!
Denawa is associated with the Tirta Empul Temple – you can read the story of his evil involvement here.
Another beauty from the Setai Darma House of Masks and Puppets. This one is Ratu, from the secular Topeng Panca dance. (There are evidently very few such secular dances in Bali; most have a religious significance.)
Panca means five – the dance was originally performed by five people, for purposes of entertainment. Ratu is is a queen or other consort. The maker is Wayan Tangguh. I loved the painting on this mask, and the delicious attention given to the mouth.
On our recent trip to Bali we spent 2 wonderful hours at the Setai Darma House of Masks and Puppets. It’s near Mas, maybe 15 minutes from Ubud, but even our hotel driver didn’t know where it was. I recommend it highly – over a thousand masks from Indonesia, China, Malaysia, and other Asian countries, and thousands of puppets as well, all housed in four antique Joglo houses, which the director, Prayitno, had shipped from Java.
I took many photos, and from time to time will post exquisite examples of both mask and puppets. Here’s the first: a topeng tua (old mans’ mask – topeng is mask in Indonesian, and topeng also refers to the masked dance). The maker of the mask is Wayan Tangguh. More notes on the topeng tua are at Mask of the World.
