By Jonathan Bailey, CBF field personnel

It has now been six and a half months since Nyoman Darsane, my mentor and friend of almost 30 years, passed away. His son, Yoseph, also a painter, has spent much of the time since then completing a museum of his father’s work adjacent to the studio where most of paintings and drawings were made.  

Darsane was a prolific painter, melding biblical themes with Balinese notions of the divine in the image of traditional dance, shadow theater and the ever-present cosmology that intermingles two worlds: sekala and niskala, the seen and the unseen. For Darsane, Balinese thought provided him a ready roadmap of the sacred, helping him to divine in the stories of Jesus particularly the whispers of God that were suited to the Balinese ear.   
  
Whether in word, song, story or image, Darsane was always asking a simple question, “Where is God?” His first response drew on an old Balinese koan-like saying: “the search for God is like looking for the footprint of a bird in flight.” For Darsane the artist, there was something intriguing about the illusiveness of God, the sheer difficulty in apprehending the mystery of Divine Presence. I think it was his commitment to translating that mystery into image, into dialog, into art, that gives his work such power to charm.  

Having questioned the notion of finding God at all, Darsane would then explain that the Balinese believe that at the cremation, the soul of the one who has died is finally released from the body. It goes first to the one who guards the west, the place of the setting sun and asks, “Is God in the West?” The guardian replies, “No. God is not in the west. Go back.” The spirit travels to the east and again asks, “Is God here in the east?” The guardian of the east answers the same. “God is not here. Go back.” And so the soul travels to the eight directions, one after the other, in search of God and eight times is told to return. Darsane then explains. “In reality, God is at the center point between east, west, north and south. The center is also where your heart is, where God is hidden in the midst of us.” The Balinese represent these eight directions and a ninth center point with a mandala like image called the nawa sangga. The symbol is constellated at each point with an aspect of God, a color, a sound, a weapon, a bodily organ and more. In Bali it has a variety of functions but for Darsane, it was its capacity to hold the question of God that he loved most. 

This week in Bali, my team of musicians and dancers will begin rehearsing a new work for Balinese gamelan titled “Constellations” by Andys Skordis and dramaturgy by Jelena Vuksanovic. Most of the 20 people involved in the performance knew and loved Darsane. This work takes its inspiration from the nawa sangga and the value that Darsane found in it for his own search for God. “Constellations” is a tribute to him. Look for it soon on YouTube!