In this chapter, I discuss two Indonesian women artists – Emiria Sunassa (1894-1964) and Mia Bustam (1920-2011) – whose creative lives spanned some important and turbulent periods in Indonesian art history. Emiria Sunassa was active during the early formation of the nation from the 1930s to the late 1950s, while Mia Bustam was active from the late 1950s until her career was cut short by the anti-communist purge of 1965-1966.

The two women participated in an era described by Caroline Turner (2006: 196) as foundational years for the ideological platform of Indonesian modern art. Much scholarship has been dedicated to nationalism in Indonesian art history (Holt 1967; Supangkat 1993; Wright 1994; Yuliman 2001; Siregar and Supriyanto 2006) but virtually no study has looked at the link between nationalism, art and gender in Indonesian art history. The aim of this chapter is to fill that gap and critically examine the important period from the 1940s to the 1960s through the frames of feminism and psychoanalysis.

Furthermore, this chapter also seeks to establish that canons and canon-making is a masculine ideal in Indonesian art history, as discussed in the previous chapter. The discussion of the artists and their works in this chapter reflects the challenge to re-insert women artists within the canon of art history and simultaneously reveal the ruptures in linear art history created by their representation of the feminine.

Cynthia Enloe (1989: 44) states that nationalism is typically born out of masculinized memory, masculinized humiliation and masculinized hope. Enloe further emphasizes the feeling of emasculation experienced by the male colonial subject under white men's rule. Echoing Enloe's argument, historian Frances Gouda describes the colonial perception of Indonesian men in the early years of the Indonesian republic as weak, effeminate and incapable of ruling themselves (Enloe 1989; Gouda 1999). It was the role of the colonial ruler to provide the firm hand of an older brother to guide the Indonesian natives towards civilization and progress (Enloe 1989; Gouda 1999). Thus, the “macho” idiom and behaviour of Indonesian men during the revolutionary period of 1945-1949 can be seen as a calculated response to colonial labelling (Gouda 1999:161).