Cover Up is a series of 4 prints emerging from Ade Darmawan’s continued interest in Magic Centre, the Indonesian publishing house which first rose to prominence with books that promised to enhance the reader’s intellectual abilities and nationalistic belonging. Magic Centre serves as a lens through which Ade Darmawan examines the social and political changes that reshaped Indonesia during the 1960s and in the lead up to the New Order regime (1966-1998) of President Suharto which actively fused capitalism with Islam and heavy industrialisation. To the new capitalist-leaning policies that Indonesia adopted after 1965, the books by Indonesian publishing house Magic Centre proffered “answers” to an audience hoping to lead a fulfilled life and master the challenges of modern capitalism and post-industrialism. Self-improvement and the optimum use of one’s skills, influence over others, the formation of character, the art of the business deal, and the life of success: these were the main themes of the publisher’s catalogues, which, in later years, consisted mostly of translations of American titles. They reflect the production and dissemination of knowledge and throw the characteristic ideological fault lines of a society undergoing profound change into sharp relief. Was Magic Centre a purveyor of reputable literature? In Cover Up, Ade Darmawan extracts and reconfigures visual elements from these books. Line drawings from illustrated diagrams in the books are overlaid on now-blank book covers which form absurd and incomprehensible collages.
