Selamat Datang

When asked about what we would want our monuments to honor, I thought a lot about the unrecognized members of our communities—people who aren’t heralded as heroes and whose labor and efforts may go unnoticed. Immediately my mind turned to the Indonesian immigrant community in New York City. How could I honor them in a way that paid homage to their resilience in the face of the violence and turmoil that propelled them out of their homelands, while also recognizing the community they helped build and the lives they touch in the present?

As I pondered this while quarantined at home, I looked for inspiration in my hometown of Jakarta, Indonesia. I ended up falling into a research rabbit-hole, digging deeper and deeper into the Selamat Datang (“Welcome”) Monument, one of the city’s more notable monuments and a site I spent my entire life passing by without sparing a single thought. The monument was constructed in the early 1960s, part of a series of several constructions and city beautification projects commissioned by Indonesia’s first President Soekarno in preparation for the Asian Games IV. “Tugu Selamat Datang” depicts two bronze statues of a man and a woman waving in a welcoming gesture, and the woman holds a flower bouquet in her left hand. The two figures are five meters tall from head-to-toe (seven meters from the tips of their raised arms to their toes), and they stand on a pedestal 30 meters off the ground. The monument symbolizes the openness of the Indonesian nation to visitors of the Asian Games.

Well into my research I quickly learned the connection the statue had with the political tensions that would soon lead to an incredibly violent period of Indonesian history. Its design evoked similarity with the art style of socialist realism which characterized much of the art produced in the USSR. Art under this style was proletarian—art relevant and understandable to workers, typical—depicting scenes of the everyday life of the people, and realistic—in the representational sense. I will later expand on relations between the USSR and Indonesia and how this is relevant to my own monument proposal.

Surrounded by a round pond and spouting fountain, Tugu Selamat Datang is located in the center, the “heart” of Jakarta at the famous roundabout Bundaran HI. Similarly, I would want my monument to be placed in the cultural “heart” of Indonesians living in New York City. From my understanding, there’s a large Indonesian population in Elmhurst, Queens, and many Indonesian heritage events and gatherings take place here. Thus, I’d place the monument at Elmhurst Park, one of the few (large) public parks in the area. It’s easily accessible, you could be doing other activities in the park and walk by the monument; it isn’t out of the way and has high foot traffic. Of course, I’d want to consult the local community and see if this location would be the best choice.

A 10-minute walk from Elmhurst Park is the St. James Parish House where the annual Indonesian Food Bazaar takes place, one of the most important events within the Indonesian immigrant community. Parallel with Tugu Selamat Datang, the monument would depict a woman holding an Indonesian dish in a bowl in one hand and extending the other out in greeting. The statue would be bronze and life-sized, maybe 5-foot tall, and raised on a small pedestal about a foot high so you could look up to it slightly but it’d still be at eye-level and approachable. I’d want the community to decide what dish the woman would hold.

The Tugu Selamat Datang was erected shortly before Indonesia’s transition to the New Order, the ousting of socialist President Sukarno and the commencement of US-backed dictator Suharto’s 31-year Presidency. It was an incredibly tumultuous period characterized by the purge of an estimated 500,000 to 3 million Indonesians by the military (a slaughter still not discussed in history books or taught in schools out of sheer fear), economic crisis, and later racist, anti-Chinese riots. These were incredibly violent, tumultuous, and at the very least uncertain times, and when the US opened its borders with the Immigration and Naturalization Act, many Indonesians fled the country out of fear for their lives, settling in cities like New York. Political unrest prompted waves of Indonesian immigrants into the US.

The text on the pedestal of the monument would read “Selamat Datang: anda punya rumah di sini juga”. Translation: Welcome: you have a home here too​. I’d want to include a plaque accompanying the monument to give it context... what the statue represents physically, symbolically, historically. I want to explicitly state that this monument and its inscription isn’t to align Indonesians seeking political refuge with the US, a country whose military actions and foreign policies orchestrated the violence that unfolded and devastated countless Indonesians. I want the monument to recognize the space Indonesian immigrants have made for themselves as a home. I want to recognize what’s unique about each immigrant’s individual circumstances, yet also help build solidarity between the diaspora and those in the homeland.

Political turmoil and imperial violence has torn us apart geographically, but we are not that different. I want to think about the term “Asian-American” not merely as a personal identity but as an intentional political one. The term was coined in 1968 as a radical label of self-determination that indicated a political agenda of equality, anti-racism, and anti-imperialism. Its origins trace back to Berkeley students Yuji Ichioka and Emma Gee, inspired by the Black Power Movement and protests against the Vietnam War. It was a term created to signal a shared and interconnected history of immigration, labor exploitation, and racism. I want the monument to honor this sentiment.