I Made Sutama, whom friends call Oka, came to Lithuania as a wood carver eight years ago. Now, wood has largely been replaced by a more ephemeral material – ice. “If you don’t come on time, you don’t see my work,” the Indonesian artist from Bali says.
Oka suggests meeting at Garso Kupolas (Sound Dome), a dome-like structure built from clay just outside Vilnius where sound and meditation sessions take place.
“I was helping build it six years ago. I put the carving here. This was one of my first projects in Lithuania. Now, I’m glad that I have a place where I can bring guests and show them my work. It’s like my CV,” he explains as we sit down for a conversation outside the dome.
Oka says he realised that he wanted to be a wood carver at a very young age. First came art in general. According to the man, it is almost impossible not to do some kind of art in Bali, at least dance or music that are part of every community’s tradition.
As a kid, he also played traditional music, joined orchestra, but says that “it was not serious because I already knew what I wanted to do”. Born to a family of a Hindu priest, Oka spent a lot of time in temples decorated with religious wood sculptures and “fell in love with the third dimension”.
“But we lived in a village where no one was carving. [...] And then my dad said that there was a place where I could study in another village. The idea was that I go there every day by bike, but I said that I want to live there because I want to see carving all day every day when I wake up and before sleep,” he says. Oka started studying the craft when he was only 12.
Way to Lithuania
Later Oka studied fine arts at the Indonesian Institute of the Arts in Denpasar. He never finished his studies, but while at college, he met his future wife – a Lithuanian called Eglė who was studying the traditional Indonesian art of batik.
“Her teacher didn’t speak English, so I was helping him to translate, to arrange little things,” Oka explains how he first met Eglė.
The couple met in 2012, got married in 2013, and had their first child in 2014. Soon, the Lithuanian woman found out that she could not have her visa extended in Indonesia because her passport was expiring.
“Either she had to go to the closest Lithuanian embassy, which was in India, Japan, or China, or go back to Lithuania. By that time, we had a small kid, and somehow I was thinking that it’s not fair that my wife lives in Bali, and I don’t know her country, her hometown, her people. So, I said, let’s go,” Oka says.
After making up their minds to go to Lithuania, the couple encountered financial difficulties – not only did they need to buy expensive plane tickets but also find a place to rent in Vilnius.
“Doesn’t matter how much you earn in Bali as a local, it’s almost impossible to make enough money to come to Lithuania. We also had a very short window of time because my wife’s passport was expiring,” Oka explains.
Encouraged by their friends, the couple decided to set up a crowdfunding page to help them move and settle in Lithuania.
From wood to ice
Oka, Eglė, and their first daughter were finally able to come to Lithuania in November 2015. Looking back to his start in a new country almost eight years later, the Indonesian man says “it was quite a struggle”.
“In the first year here, we got the news that the second child was coming. [...] Automatically, my wife had to step back from work, and I was worried because I was just a freelancer,” he shares.
After coming to Lithuania, the first offer Oka received was for an ice-carving job. He says he had no experience working with this material but took the job because he needed it.
“I’d never touched ice before as a carving material, and no one taught me how to work with it. I asked them, who will teach me? And they said, there’s YouTube. So I learned from YouTube, Instagram,” Oka says.
Now, Oka is one of a handful of professional ice sculptors in Lithuania and spends most of his time working in the freezer at -18 degrees. He says he has little time for anything else, as he is busy making ice sculptures for parties and other events. He is also starting to travel more and more for work, receiving orders from Germany, Latvia, and other countries.
“Now, sometimes I work on the same projects in other countries with people whom I learned from. It’s like a dream come true. Sometimes, they don’t believe that I learned from YouTube,” Oka shares.
Asked how working with ice is different from wood, the man says that the former is softer and more dangerous to work with because it's heavy and slippery. A normal order is around 300 kilos of ice, but it sometimes goes up to a ton, Oka explains.
Ice sculptures are also temporary, but this does not bother the Indonesian artist.
“For me, ice is not about the material but about the impression of people when they see the work. That’s why with ice if you don’t come on time, you don’t see my work,” he smiles.
Language like mantra
Oka also participates in ice-carving competitions in Lithuania and other countries. In 2020, he was crowned the Lithuanian champion.
The Indonesian man often travels to competitions with other Lithuanian ice sculptors, who call him “the half-Lithuanian guy”, Oka explains with a smile. In his eight years in Lithuania, the man has also learnt to speak some Lithuanian.
“I heard Lithuanian for the first time in Bali. I was watching my wife and my friend talking. I said that it’s very beautiful and I want to learn. It sounds like a mantra to me,” he says. “In my family, we studied Sanskrit for the mantras, and Lithuanian is similar to Sanskrit.”
Oka says he notices that people’s expressions change when they hear him speak Lithuanian: “They sometimes stereotype me in their head and then I speak Lithuanian and things change.”
Talking about Lithuania, like many foreigners, Oka also praises its nature, even though when he first came here in November “the trees were without leaves, the sky was grey, and the days were short”.
“I didn’t know that there is this thing with seasonal sunset and sunrise because, in Bali, you have 12-hour day and 12-hour night all year,” he says.
But nature is where Oka likes to go think about his work at any time of the year.
“It’s so easy to withdraw here. For example, I can go to Rokantiškės, or I used to wake up in the morning, take the first bus to Antakalnis, and just walk in the forest. Walking gives me a lot of ideas about what to carve, how to solve a problem in carving,” he adds.
“That’s the best of Lithuania because, in other countries, it takes you some time to go to nature. Even in Bali, it took me half an hour riding to get to the greenery. And you don’t have snakes here,” the man smiles.
Between Bali and Lithuania
Oka’s daughters, who are now 6 and 9, also love nature.
“I’m happy that they love walking in the nature a lot. Sometimes on weekends when I’m tired, they come and say, let’s go to the forest, so I must go,” he smiles.
The man shares that one of his biggest dreams right now is to visit Bali with his entire family, something he hasn’t been able to do since moving to Lithuania.
“My children don’t really experience the fact that they are half Indonesian. I can miss my country wherever I am, and if I go home, there will be no impact on me. But If I bring them, there will be a very big impact,” Oka says.
“I would like to show them the culture, the family heritage, the language, the food so that they could not only intellectually understand that they are half Indonesian but really embody it,” he adds.
According to Oka, one day, his daughters will have to decide if they want to be Lithuanian or Indonesian because neither country accepts dual nationality.
“But I don’t worry about that too much. If they choose to be Lithuanian, they will still have a hometown in Bali, and If they will be Indonesian, they will always have a home here because they grew up here. [...] My duty is to ensure that they grow in a good atmosphere, with both parents, inspire them, and that’s it,” the man says.
Are you a foreigner living in Lithuania and would like to tell us your story? Please write to us at english@lrt.lt
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