Lila Cita Sukaning Manah at SAKA Museum

Lila Cita Sukaning Manah at SAKA Museum

by Marlowe Bandem

Jimbaran, July 2025

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Under an orange sunset sky filled with the majestic sounds of gamelan Tabuh Telu Genta Suara Revolusi (Gesuri), the SAKA Museum garden came alive with beaming faces and a strong sense of togetherness.

On July 11, 2025, over 350 guests gathered to celebrate the culmination of four major exhibitions in a celebration titled Lila Cita Sukaning Manah, a Balinese phrase invoking “sincere intent, joyful heart.”

More than a finale, the event became a heartfelt milestone and a moment to honor the artists, supporters, and communities who shaped SAKA’s journey to date. It was also a chance to reflect on the deeper responsibility of engaging in the ongoing and often challenging work of cultural stewardship.

“As part of the team responsible for these exhibitions,” said Vincent Chandra, SAKA’s exhibition manager, “my excitement is matched by anxiety. These exhibitions weren’t easy to realize. There were setbacks and moments when we thought they might not happen. If we’re honest, this is both a celebration and a test. We’re putting our values out there and inviting the public to hold us accountable.”

Lila Cita Sukaning Manah reflects a way of living together. In Bali, joy and sincerity are not kept private. They take shape in rituals, offerings, and the everyday rhythm of community life. Celebrating with a joyful heart is not nostalgia, but a reminder that culture stays alive through conscious, collective care, not simply by being handed down.

This spirit resonates with the Balinese triad Siwam, Satyam, Sundaram, where beauty (sundaram) is not just surface, but the visible result of clear intention (siwam) and meaningful action (satyam).

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As the final notes of Tabuh Telu Gesuri faded into the evening, they gathered the spirit of the day and set the tone for a night filled with gratitude and a deep sense of connection. Earlier, guests had journeyed through the four major exhibitions. Each one explores a facet of Balinese life, woven together through cosmic rituals, ecology, and ancestral knowledge. 

KASANGA: Bali Dares to Stop

Time is the pulse of Kasanga, an exhibition curated by the Balinese artist collective Gurat Institute that showcases the intertwining rituals of Bali’s ninth lunar month, known locally as Kasanga, or Cetra Masa. This is the season of thresholds, when the island leaves pancaroba, a restless in-between of whipping winds, erratic rain, and stifling heat. Nature is in flux, preparing for renewal. At its crescendo arrives Nyepi, Bali’s famed Day of Silence as the culmination of chaos subdued.

“What sets Nyepi apart is the island-wide commitment to pause and stop,” explains curator I Wayan Seriyoga Parta. “As a collective reset, it’s the logical consequence of Tawur Agung, a grand sacrificial rite that forces the entire island to confront its own rhythms, disruptions, and dependencies. Silence and stillness transpires as a social and ecological intervention that only is possible because millions choose to stop, together, at once.”

Through sculptural reliefs, towering papier-mâché dolls called ogoh-ogoh, and artworks that forward aksara (Balinese script), rerajahan (sacred drawings), prasi (palm-leaf illustrations), and lontar texts, the Kasanga exhibition makes the intangible tactile. Spanning three floors, the exhibition also features an archival wall of photographs by Rio Helmi, capturing moments of community ebullience across decades, alongside a chronological display tracing the evolution of ogoh-ogoh from traditional forms to contemporary expressions.

Together, these elements invite us to reconsider what the Balinese mean by somia, sunia, and ramia or balance, silence, and renewal beyond abstract ideals, as a lived, orchestrated cycle of daily life.

While Kasanga offers a layered, symbolic experience of ritual through form and philosophy, Twilight Journey, located on the mezzanine level, extends this reflection into the sensory realm of sight and sound.

Twilight Journey: Seeing and Feeling Silence

Where Kasanga carves silence into matter, Twilight Journey dissolves it into light and motion. This 360-degree immersive film invites visitors to drift into Bali’s cosmic breath as a full day of silence expressed through shifting light, expansive landscapes, and ambient sound. But this is not a romanticized silence. It is alive, reverberating across four regions of the island where horizon meets sky, and stillness becomes a kind of movement.

Guided by the Balinese compass, the film traces a path from south to north, connecting Nusa Penida and Gunung Kawi, and from west to east, moving between Segara Rupek and Tianyar. At the heart of this journey, the viewer becomes the unseen fifth axis, the still point at the center of it all.

Over seven minutes of time-lapse wonder, Twilight Journey by APE Motion, a Bali-based visual collective, becomes a shared observance on a cosmos left undisturbed. Beneath Akasa (father sky) and above Pertiwi (mother earth), we are reminded that harmony is still possible, even amid the relentless pace of modern Bali.

Subak: The Ancient Order of Bali

If Nyepi draws us inward, then Subak turns our gaze outwards to the terraced landscapes shaped by centuries of cooperation and care. For generations, Subak has been more than an irrigation system. It is a living tradition that connects land, water, and spirit in a shared rhythm of planting, praying, and preserving. Its beauty lies not only in the rice fields it nourishes, but in the values it sustains: harmony, reciprocity, and collective responsibility.

Presented as Subak: The Ancient Order of Bali, this exhibition showcases a tactile and digital landscape where visitors step into the role of the pekaséh, the water stewards whose decisions ripple far beyond the harvest. Through films, art installations, and interactive encounters, visitors can explore the many facets of Subak, from everyday offerings to the largest harvest festival of Ngusaba Kadasa in Batur.

A key highlight is Flow of Water, a multimedia simulation that invites visitors —especially young explorers— to manage water systems and minimize pests by coordinating upstream and downstream cooperation. It reveals how ecological balance is guided not only by nature, but also maintained through shared responsibility and ancestral wisdom.

At the heart of it all is Tri Hita Karana, the Balinese philosophy of harmony among people, nature, and the divine. These principles are deeply embedded in the Four Cultural Landscapes of Subak, recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 2012.

Curated by anthropologist Prof. Dr J. Stephen Lansing, whose decades of research helped secure that recognition, the exhibition reminds us that Subak is not just a tradition of the past; it is the foundation of Balinese society. When it falters, the delicate balance between ecology, economy, and culture begins to unravel.

As a gesture of trust and blessing, the exhibition features sacred volcanic sands and batu paras (volcanic sandstones), gifted and consecrated by stewards of the Ulun Danu temple situated in Lake Batur. Just as the Subak are pasihan or communities blessed by Dewi Danu, the Goddess of the Lake, these artifacts root the exhibition in spirit and responsibility, affirming SAKA’s role as a guardian of cultural and ecological reverence.

Panca Maha Bhuta: The Five Great Elements

This special exhibition, curated by Bruce W. Carpenter and Dr James Bennett, presents the world of Panca Maha Bhuta through a breathtaking collection of artifacts drawn from Bali’s rich spiritual, artistic, and ritual past.

Set in a charismatic blackened gallery with dimmed lighting, the exhibition invites visitors into an atmosphere of quiet immersion. Each element—Pertiwi (earth), Apah (water), Agni (fire), Bayu (air), and Akasa (ether)—takes center stage in a thematically arranged display. From intricately woven textiles to gilded palace doors, temple sculptures, ritual tools, architectural fragments, and sacred jewelry, each object channels the presence and power of a respective element.

The Panca Maha Bhuta are not abstract concepts. They are living principles that shape every dimension of Balinese life, from ritual and healing to philosophy, cosmology, and art. Each element governs a natural realm while maintaining harmony between bhuwana alit (the microcosm) and bhuwana agung (the macrocosm). This dynamic relationship is what sustains both the individual and the universe.

Following the audience’s journey through the exhibitions, the Lila Cita Sukaning Manah event offered a moment to reflect on these deeper meanings. Speaking during the gathering, Vice Governor of Bali, I Nyoman Giri Prasta, reminded the audience that these elements do not exist for our admiration alone, but they respond to how we treat them.

“Water sustains life only when it is honored and protected. When disrespected, it floods, erodes, and destroys,” he said. “Earth, when nurtured, brings prosperity. But if neglected, it responds with droughts, landslides, earthquakes. These are not just natural events. They are reflections of how we live.”

He continued,

“The question this exhibition raises is whether we will keep admiring these elements from a safe distance or finally begin to see ourselves in their balance, for better or worse.”

The Vice Governor closed with an affirmation of SAKA Museum’s deeper role in today’s Bali:

“This is not about attracting tourists. It’s about cultivating reverence for our ancestors, our rituals, our elders, and for the land that gives us life. Through places like SAKA, we don’t just preserve culture. We remember how to care for it.”

When Culture Unites

As night fell, the museum grounds stirred with spectacular and sensational energy. SAKA’s architecture glowed with power, its curves and angles flickering between shadow and light complementing a feast of Balinese dance and music unfolded beneath the full moon light, including the soft, romantic sound of the sasando, a special performance flown in from Labuan Bajo. Graceful and heartfelt, the evening embodied the very spirit of Lila Cita Sukaning Manah.

Director Dr Judith E. Bosnak reflected on the journey that brought SAKA into being, honoring the many hands behind the scenes: the architects, engineers, and contractors who gave the museum its form, and the curators, artists, designers, vendors, and community members who gave it soul. The museum, she said, stands as proof of what shared vision and collective care can build.

Her words arrive at a time when SAKA Museum is receiving growing international recognition for its bold approach to storytelling and its dedication to living heritage, including the French Prix Versailles award, naming it one of the most beautiful museums of 2025. But for Dr Bosnak and the SAKA team, the goal has never been prestige but presence: to ensure that culture in Bali is not only seen, but felt. Not only documented, but understood. Not only remembered, but deeply respected for generations to come.

The evening closed on a high note as KADAPAT, an experimental music collective from Bali, took the stage. Their electrifying blend of electronic textures and traditional gamelan rippled through the night, carving out a new kind of narrative. It was rooted in Rwa Bhineda, the Balinese principle of harmony through opposites.

Rwa Bhineda teaches that everything comes in pairs: sun and moon, day and night, male and female, as well as mountain and sea. These are not opposing forces, but balancing ones, each completing the other. KADAPAT moved at the edge of these dualities: tradition and innovation, sacred and urban, sound and silence.

In many ways, the SAKA Museum walks the same path: not preserving culture by freezing it in time, but by keeping it in motion, allowing it to question, stretch, and transform. Tradition here is not static; it is alive. It listens.

Lila Cita Sukaning Manah reminds us that culture is not an ideal. It is a practice. It asks us to show up. To participate. To care. And in a world where so much feels uncertain, SAKA offers something rare: a steady rhythm, a culture in conversation, a museum that unites.

So come. Step into this space where silence speaks, where water remembers, and where knowledge moves like wind across a field. Let SAKA awaken in you the spirit of sincere intent and a joyful heart.

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