Image size: 43.5 x 35.0 cm,
Image size: 45.5 x 35.0 cm (with border 62.5 x 52.5 cm)
Originally from Cirebon, Haryadi Suadi is a well-known printmaker trained at the art training institution in Bandung where he studied printmtmaking under the tutelage of Mochtar Apin from the late 1950s until mid-1960s. Unlike the earliest generation of Bandung artists, such as Apin, Ahmad Sadali, and A.D. Pirous who worked closely with Western abstraction, Haryadi's prints engaged more closely with the works of Japanese printmaker, Shiko Munakata, and local languages of representation informed by Javanese and Cirebonese cultural and material tradition. Printed in 1979, this print displays the juxtaposition of figurative image with illegible calligraphic text that both encases and forms the feminine bodies. The title "Dua Wanita dan Isim" translates to "Two Women and Isim," and descriptively indexes the incorporation of "isim." Isim is local term often used in Cirebon to refer to both talismanic objects and talismanic writings and images used to prevent illnesses. Isim existed before Islam was fully entrenched in Java, but it continues to exist after the spread of Islam in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Since then isim began to be written in Arabic and Jawi script incorporating Islamic prayers for healing and protection as well as religious discourse and Sufi tracts.
