“Wayang kulit”, the battle of shadows at the Quai Branly museum – L’Express

A screen, puppets, a manipulator-actor: that’s the basics of shadow theater. The one whose name is wayang kulit is, much more than simple entertainment, a real performance which adapts its repertoire to the ritual and agrarian calendar or to family celebrations. He carries around his share of legendary figures, with whom, even today, many Javanese and Balinese identify. Behind these puppet epics, with their age-old plots and spectacular staging, lies a timeless philosophy. “Beyond the story that carries you away, we can detect all the tensions inherent in human nature, our inner characters, with which we battle daily,” underlines Constance de Monbrison, curator, alongside Julien Rousseau, of the small visual and educational exhibition presented in the Atelier Martine Aublet space at the Quai Branly museum.

We find the first written traces of wayang kulit in Javanese literature of the 11th century. On the island of Java, this court art then retraces the great mythical battles from the Indian epics of the Mahabharata, which features two rival princely dynasties, the Kaurawa and the Pandawa, and the Ramayana, which counts among its key protagonists the famous monkey Hanoman. Little by little, the practice, which sees the performance begin at nightfall and end at daybreak, spreads to all levels of society to become ultra-popular. It owes its name, wayang (skin) kulit (leather) to the material with which the upper protagonists are designed.

The stage system, for its part, responds to immutable rules. Respected for his multiple talents, the dalanga puppeteer, storyteller, singer and conductor, manipulates the figures behind a lit screen, interpreting each role while directing the gamelan – the traditional instrumental ensemble of shadow theater percussion. If, nowadays, performance is mainly seen from the side of dalang to better understand its virtuosity, formerly only men had this privilege; the women and children were, for their part, confined in front of the screen facing the shadows. What hasn’t changed is the emotional conflict between them. On the one hand, the wise men, traditionally placed to the right of the dalangwho have acquired the detachment; on the other, to the left of the manipulator, the uncontrollable, incapable of controlling their impulses. A battle in three or four acts, rich in twists and turns, which ends on the only possible path: meditation.

On the Indonesian archipelago, the tradition of wagang kulit continues to perpetuate itself. Of the dalang new generation are renewing the genre, like the artist Heri Dono, who created a shadow theater cut out of cardboard, with which he transposes the discords of yesteryear into a contemporary mythology. In addition to being inventive, the creator has humor, which Indonesians love. Great-granddaughter of first wife dalang at the Surakarta Palace, Ni Woro Mustiko Siwi, for her part, plays the 2.0 puppeteer with a digital adaptation of the practice which she broadcasts to smartphones. Enough to carry the good word of myths far away.

Wayang Kulitat the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum, in Paris, until March 23, 2025.