The Exhibition Value of Wayang in Colonial Modernity: The Case of Tasripin’s Puppets

The annual exhibitions held in Surabaya in 1905-1908, with their displays of crafts and artisans, marks a crucial shift in the way that wayang and other arts were apprehended and produced. Until the early twentieth century, wayang had to be custom ordered. Puppets were produced through negotiation between skilled craftsmen and the puppeteers or connoisseurs who commissioned them. Although not strictly unique, details of carving and coloring always varied, informed by the tastes of both makers and owners. In contrast, puppets in modernity were fashioned by teams of anonymous craftspeople and bought “off the shelf” as souvenirs for static display. Translated into Walter Benjamin’s terms, wayang puppets made for display lost their “cult value”—that is to say they no longer exist to take on roles within plays in relation to other puppet characters. Instead, puppets took on “exhibition value,” appreciated for their singular beauty, accruing cultural capital for the owners who ornamented their domiciles with them. Puppets in this modern, capitalist economy were no longer performing objects awaiting activation by skilled puppeteers, and became instead icons of identity, markers of affluence and cultural sophistication, mementos of travel or upbringing. This paper considers the desacralization of wayang making and the unmooring of craft skills from storytelling contexts in relation to puppets and related artifacts commissioned by the wealthy Semarang businessman Tasripin (1834-1919) for children’s play, Semarang parades, and exhibition in the Netherlands. These puppets are witness to Tasripin’s accomplishments in the tannery trade and his pride in Javanese cultural heritage.