Lasse Sorensen, Denpasar, Indonesia (CN) – In Bali's capital of Denpasar, on a narrow street filled with local food vendors, a disturbing image is plastered on a wall.
The artwork – impossible for pedestrians to ignore – shows a Balinese mother wearing loose attire and holding her naked baby. Gas masks cover both of their faces.
The mural is a far cry from the exoticized image of Bali as a land of pristine beaches and ancient rituals – and that's just the point. Created by Slinat, an anonymous local artist who says his self-invented pen name means something like "Silly in Art," the piece questions the long and complicated relationship between this tropical island and its foreign tourists.
This artwork is just one of many dystopian pieces plastered around Denpasar by Slinat. The artist thinks many Balinese appreciate his message. As he worked on this piece, he said, local vendors gave him fruits and other treats every day, highlighting the love and acceptance he says he's received from local workers.
With a population of around 4.3 million people and a land area only slightly bigger than Delaware, Bali has for years been hugely dependent on its tourism sector. Before the island locked down during the Covid-19 pandemic, around 60% of Bali's gross regional product was involved with the tourism trade.
The lockdown was therefore devastating for many local businesses – but as fears about Covid have cooled down, tourism numbers have ramped back up. Between January and March 2023, more than one million tourists arrived in Bali, including around 50,000 Americans, according to Statista, a German data and analytics company.
As tourists have returned, so too have concerns about over-tourism on "the Island of the Gods" – a nickname for Bali that references both its historic connection with Hinduism and its unique local mythology.
That's where artists and activists like Slinat come in. In an interview last year in his private home studio in Denpasar, the street artist urged others to imagine a future where the island's economy is not so dependent on tourism.
"The pandemic showed that when tourists are gone, we cannot do anything," Slinat told Courthouse News. He appealed to fellow Balinese to start thinking about who their land should serve in the future: wealthy foreigners, or the people who actually live here.
On Bali, the renewed surge in tourism is not the only factor fueling concerns like these. A new visa scheme, launched in 2022, allows foreign nationals to stay in Indonesia for up to 10 years in exchange for depositing at least $130,000 into a state-owned bank. Officials say the deposits will help boost the economy, but some local Balinese have criticized the scheme, arguing Bali does not need more development when it's already struggling with infrastructure like water and waste management.
Besides, some foreigners are finding cheaper ways to be in Bali – for example, by overstaying on tourist visas. By late August, Bali officials said they'd deported at least 213 people, including 14 Americans, for violating immigration rules, committing crimes and disrespecting local culture, among other reasons.
"There's been an influx of visitors that haven't educated themselves on Bali or show[n] the intention to do so," said Yoko Mayuzumi, a researcher at Bunkyo University in Japan who studies sustainable tourism in Bali. (Her husband and occasional research partner, I Made Meiko Sugiatmika, was born and raised in Ubud, a town in central Bali known for its local arts and craft centers.)
Some foreigners on tourist visas have come only to make money, the pair said, without the intent of learning about Balinese culture.
In the process, Mayuzumi and Sugiatmika argue, they've undermined locals competing for the same jobs. As one example, Mayuzumi cited Russian and Ukrainian tourists, who she said are setting up businesses in Bali without the necessary paperwork.
As tensions between locals and foreigners have grown, authorities have stepped up efforts to combat bad tourist behavior. In July, a handful of public institutions, including several Balinese immigration offices, created the Bali Becik Task Force to conduct what they call "control operations" against visa violators. (Becik means "good" in Balinese.) The task force concluded its work in December 2023, though it's yet to release official figures on its operations.
But with Bali's economy so wrapped up in tourism, local officials and business leaders have continued encouraging foreign visitors to come despite local consequences, Sugiatmika said.
He's seen the effects of such decisions in his own hometown of Ubud. Luxury rental villas are erasing rice paddies, and "new coffee shops are destroying our architecture for the tourism industry," he said. "I'm really sorry to say it, but this is neocolonialism."
As Bali continues to emerge from the pandemic, the island continues to search for the right balance between tourist dollars and local needs. This debate will likely be a major factor in Indonesia's presidential elections in February – especially after New Year celebrations once again reignited concerns over tourist misbehavior.
In the view of some Balinese, including the street artist Slinat, relying on tourism will not secure the future of this world-famous island. Instead, he says Balinese people should stop worrying about pleasing foreign visitors and start considering what kind of society they want for themselves.
Like Sugiatmika, he sees tourism as inseparable from Bali's history of colonization. Many of his works incorporate images from old travel advertisements luring customers to visit an "exotic" version of Bali – a vision of the island that first emerged under Dutch colonial rule. To this pastiche he adds elements like gas masks, which he says are intended to satirize and disrupt the romanticized images that foreigners may have about this place.
For Slinat, the stakes couldn't be higher. He sees the images of Bali presented by the tourism industry as static and out-of-touch with the real culture of the people who live here. All this tourism might pay off in the short term – but "when there's no more left for the visitors to do in Bali, they will just move to another place," he says. With his dystopian artwork, he offers a hopeful vision for Bali's future, one in which Balinese themselves – not just the tourist industry – get to decide this island's fate.