The Head Iconography of the Chinese - Javanese Shadow Puppet (Wacinwa) Collection of the Sonobudoyo State Museum of Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Hanggar Budi Prasetya

2019

Abstract

The main aim of my research is to explore and describe the iconography of the Chinese – Javanese (Wacinwa) shadow puppet collection of the State Museum of Yogyakarta (SMY). To explore the iconography of the collection means at the same time to identify the shadow puppet characters. The shadow puppet set of the museum was made in 1925 and have been popular between 1925 and 1967 mainly among the Peranakan Chinese communities in Indonesia. Later on, for more than forty years, until 2014 this puppet was not performed largely because of political reasons. Since last year this puppet, this unique tradition of art, has been performed again several times. Although the quality and the condition of this puppet collection are considerably good, a detailed iconographical study and especially, a complete catalogue of it, is still missing. The main problem regarding the identification of the characters is that we do not know about any existing parallel wayang sets. The Wacinwa set of puppets were made to perform the Sie Jin Kui (Xi Rengui) epic, written during the Tang era, but the iconography of the characters are clearly following the art of the Ming dynasty. According to the research I can differentiate the following eight groups in the Wacinwa Collection of SMY: 1. priests and monks; 2. emperors or kings; 3. aristocrats and noblemen; 4. generals and commanders; 5. soldiers; 6. vendors and sellers; 7. children; 8. weapons (accessories). However in my present research my aim is to describe and identify the characters of the Wacinwa collectionof the SMY, Indonesia one by one. In the early stage, I attempted to identify the wacinwa by comparing it with the image on Sie Jin Kui’s comic. In fact, this way turned to be unsuccessful. An image existing in the comics is excessively unclear. Then I compared it with the Chinese shadow puppet (pi ying xi) and the Javanese shadow puppet. By looking at its iconography, wacinwa is closer to Pi ying xi.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Prasetya H. (2019). The Head Iconography of the Chinese - Javanese Shadow Puppet (Wacinwa) Collection of the Sonobudoyo State Museum of Yogyakarta, Indonesia.In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Interdisciplinary Arts and Humanities - Volume 1: ICONARTIES, ISBN 978-989-758-450-3, pages 308-313. DOI: 10.5220/0008764003080313

in Bibtex Style

@conference{iconarties19,
author={Hanggar Budi Prasetya},
title={The Head Iconography of the Chinese - Javanese Shadow Puppet (Wacinwa) Collection of the Sonobudoyo State Museum of Yogyakarta, Indonesia},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Interdisciplinary Arts and Humanities - Volume 1: ICONARTIES,},
year={2019},
pages={308-313},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0008764003080313},
isbn={978-989-758-450-3},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Interdisciplinary Arts and Humanities - Volume 1: ICONARTIES,
TI - The Head Iconography of the Chinese - Javanese Shadow Puppet (Wacinwa) Collection of the Sonobudoyo State Museum of Yogyakarta, Indonesia
SN - 978-989-758-450-3
AU - Prasetya H.
PY - 2019
SP - 308
EP - 313
DO - 10.5220/0008764003080313