Amreta who? (and why I created this site)
Sidik. That’s my father’s last name. As a Javanese I was only given a set of names which wittingly formed a phrase. And one day the little Javanese had to apply for passport to go to France and hopelessly needed a last name. With the risk of my mother’s protest for cutting the phrase of which the meaning she had contemplated for months before my birth, plus without the name’s owner’s consent, I wrote ‘Sidik’ as my last name on the passport application form. Somehow I forgot about the risks. It’s got to be a lucky name, when even more than 20 years later I’m still stuck with it. In happy mode. This combo has made me widely known as an artsy geek girl by the name of Amreta Sidik. And bear with me, folks, I’m in attempt to boldly dig stories and trace my father the painter’s footsteps in Bali – during the 50s and early 60s, Yogyakarta (my hometown) during his childhood + after Bali and New Zealand – until his death in 2004.
I am digging memories of my father’s life in art.
I knew Fadjar Sidik as a father. Not an ordinary one. I think my little sisters would agree with me. But I knew so little about him as an artist. I have certain memories from my childhood, and of course from my first ‘study’ trip to Bali with him and his students when I was nine year old. We went to visit magnificent places and temples. We met with Balinese and foreign artists. And during that adventure I got my first real photography lessons using his professional camera. Father told me a lot of stories. Father read to me mythology and folklores. Our first subscription was a set of encyclopedia for kids. That’s how I got to love astronomy and the kingdom of plants. When I didn’t behave, he locked me in his office where I could use his precious tape player with a headphone and listen to his collection of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Vivaldi and Tchaikovsky in marathon. I’m still best friends with those geniuses. No one would argue. I can’t live without their music. And when the boys in school and in the neighborhood were mean to me, he gave me Pippi Longstocking. Straight to the point. That’s what I knew of him.
It’s time to put together my findings. Saturday 18 January 2014 will be the 10th anniversary of his death. And if you’re curious why I wanted to create an online presentation for my project rather than anything else, it is unarguably a tribute to my dad – the very first person who encouraged, supported, and challenged me to do my first projects on the late 1990’s generation of computer. (in plain words: he worked super hard to be able to buy me ‘a fancy thing called PC + a color printer’, but I had to report to him by creating one project every week, printing and sending the project to him. That’s how I started to experiment with layouts and graphics, greeting cards and Geocities – those times when ‘comic sans’ was the only cute font I knew. Clearly my dad was the very person responsible for my love of the online world.
That is why I created this site.
