Seats of Power

During Soeharto’s New Order, the choice of chairs for the Garuda Room of the Gedung Agung Presidential Palace in Yogyakarta, became a tool for legitimizing state power. During the 1970s, the décor of the Gedung Agung was completely redesigned by the then Head of the Presidential Household, Joop Ave (1934–2014; in office 1972–1978), a process heavily influenced by Soeharto’s wife, Ibu Tien Soeharto (Siti Hartinah, 1923–1996), a minor noblewoman (Raden Ayu) from the Mangkunegaran house. Her love of the traditional arts of the ancient Javanese kingdoms, inspired the design and the arrangement of the chairs in the Ruang Garuda, which were direct copies of the chairs in the Pura Mangkunegaran in Surakarta, specifically those in the Pracimayasa, the private reception area of the western palace (omah kulon) built during the reign of Mangkunegoro VII (1916–1944). In this period, the style Louis Quinze (1715–1774) was adopted to create the late 20th-century equivalent of the traditional ‟throne room” which had been a feature of the pre-1942 Gedung Agung. Using a semiotic approach, the chair designs used by President Soeharto for official occasions were clearly inspired by Javanese philosophy and symbolised the social stratification found in traditional Javanese royal palaces. During his so-called “New Order” era, President Soeharto attempted to position himself as a latter-day Javanese monarch albeit one ruling over a secular republic. The design of the Gedung Agung chairs bears living witness to those regal aspirations

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