Jathilan: Dancing with the spirits
Up to this day, life on the island of Java maintains a unique unseen dimension. Despite modernization and growing Islamization, spirits are still believed to populate mountain slopes and ocean shores, bamboo thickets near human dwellings, and even the most mundane places – like toilets. Alongside spirits exists a vibrant culture of interacting with them. A dance known as jathilan or kuda kepang is its most striking example.
Grown-up men – sometimes, women or children – wearing bright intricate costumes and makeup (but, at times, just some mismatched pieces of traditionally dyed cloth) mount flat horse effigies and dance around portraying but also, possibly, mocking noble Javanese warriors of the past. What starts in quite an orderly manner eventually descends into chaos, once the dancers achieve a state of trance, believed to be caused by spirits entering their bodies.
Photographer and cultural anthropologist Eva Rapoport has spent years following jathilan performances, researching underlying religious and political connotations and just admiring this tradition for its resilience and plasticity.
Jathilan is not a kind of Javanese art to be advertised to foreign tourists or showcased at the events promoting Indonesian culture abroad, yet it exists and persists, inspiring grassroots togetherness, providing a cathartic experience and even occasional tongue-in-cheek social commentary.
This exhibition invites visitors to brush against the invisible world and behold a tangible dimension of spirits dancing through human bodies.
Eva Rapoport is a photographer and cultural anthropologist who spent seven years in Southeast Asia developing photography projects documenting traditional performing arts and festivities, while also working on the research of Javanese trance dance known as jathilan or kuda kepang. The exhibition opens on the same day as Eva’s PhD defense at the University of Antwerp. Her other visual works – including the most recent project narrating the story of Russian anti-war emigration through the means of AI-generated images – have been exhibited in France, Germany, Italy, Thailand, Turkey, and Georgia.
