Recreating once hidden historical Indonesian reliefs – Art and culture

The figures of fishermen and farmers sitting on the wall seemed intent on selling their catch and produce to passers-by. Titled ‘Sarinah Relief 3D Print’, the resin and polyactic acid work by digital artist Nus Salomo and his NuMo Studio sought to create ‘photographs that capture every element of the relief as whole and complete as possible’, curators Asikin Hasan and Ibrahim Noting Soetomo in a curatorial text of the work.

They noted that the printing would then go through a number of stages, starting with ‘photographs that capture each element of the relief as a whole and as completely as possible (to redesign the relief) through digital sculpture’, they claimed, as ‘ Sarinah is a kind of high relief where the sculptures are projected from the stone background.”

They recognized that the 3D printing for the relief, which was made with state-of-the-art blue laser printing technology, was made possible by the completeness of the digital data, after its rediscovery in 2021 in a basement of the Sarinah Mall in Central Jakarta, and immediate conservation on behalf of Minister of State Enterprises Erick Thohir.

A blast from the past: A 3D print rendering of the Sarinah relief brings a new perspective on the works to a younger generation as part of an exhibition at the Salihara Art Center in South Jakarta on May 11, 2024. The exhibition presented commissioned reliefs of Indonesia’s first president Sukarno. (JP/Tunggul Wirajuda)

Modern view on Indonesian reliefs

“Sarinah Relief 3D Print” is one of the works on display in the Auxiliary era Bung Karno exhibition at Salihara Art Center in South Jakarta.

The exhibition aims to shed light on the restoration of reliefs commissioned by Sukarno in 1957, in particular a triptych created for Jakarta’s Kemayoran International Airport, as part of his urban planning campaign in Jakarta to beautify the capital.