Art Jakarta’s latest edition, which ran from 3 to 5 October came just weeks after nationwide anticorruption protests convulsed the world’s fourth most populous country and subsequently spread to Nepal, the Philippines, Morocco and Madagascar. The mood on the ground was one of relief that the upheaval had subsided before the fair, now so central to Indonesia’s art market.
“In this time of uncertainty and economy, gallerists did not set such high expectations this year,” said Art Jakarta’s director Tom Tandio. “The series of demonstrations definitely left a scar on us Jakartans, as we saw a number of civilians get hurt and even died during the process.”
Tandio said Jakarta’s art world “was very vocal during the heat of the moment, arranging donations and even attended the protests themselves”. He added: “A lot of us could not go anywhere for a few days due to road closures and people made digital posters, sharing them on social media, voicing their thoughts and protests which were quite uplifting. It was a moment that strengthened our bond as a community.”
Among the booths with more pointed content was new Indonesian player Ara Contemporary, established earlier this year by former staff of Sullivan and Strumpf, Roh Projects and Art Jakarta itself, with a focus on promoting Southeast Asian artists. Among its more charged works were Agung Harahap’s manipulated photograph of late Indonesian president and ladies’s man Nkrumah Sukarno with Marilyn Monroe, selling for $4000, part of series depicting the politician with Western celebrities and politicians. “In 2022 one went viral, with people thinking the image was real,” said Ara Contemporary’s co-founder Fiesta Ramadanti. The gallery sold around 70% of its stand on opening day, she said, to collectors from Singapore, Thailand and Hong Kong as well as Indonesia.
Ara also showed the sculpted paper installations of Irfan Hendrian, a US-born Indonesian-Chinese who recreates the ornate but defensive window grates of his family home in Bandung’s Chinatown. Hendrian’s works, priced between $800 to $9000, reference Indonesia’s deadly anti-ethnic Chinese riots in 1998. “People used to avoid talking about 1998, but now it is more and more open, especially [among] the young,” Ramadanti says. Earlier this year artists held a talk about the massacre followed by a tour of its site, Jakarta’s Chinatown Glodok.
Describing Ara as an “ambitious gallery with serious programming”, Tandio says recent years have seen “an exciting rise in the number of new contemporary galleries opening up in Jakarta”, including branches of Taipei’s Yiri Arts, Seoul’s Theo and Baik Gallery, and Kuala Lumpur’s Art WeMe Contemporary.
Ruangrupa celebrates 25 years
While this is an off year for the Jakarta Biennale, the fair this year overlapped with the Yayasan Biennale Yogyakarta (until 20 November) and with Indonesian collective ruangrupa’s anniversary exhibition ruru25: Poros Lumbung, 25 years of ruangrupa, staged at music festival Synchronize Fest adjacent to the fair venue JlExpo. Spread around a 4,600 sq.m. hall were seven of the celebrated group’s signature kampong interactive projects, five shown in Indonesia for the first time. Ruangrupa spent $30,000 on the venue and one year preparing. The project also involves 29 other Indonesian collectives including Jayapura’s Indonesia Art Movement, Palu’s Forum Sudutpandang and Bandung’s Gelanggang Olah Rasa.
Of September’s protests, ruangrupa member Farid Rakun says: “We are supporting them of course.” The protests highlighted for the collective how Indonesia’s population is dominated by young people, “so they don’t know 1998, they voted for [new president] Prabowo [Subianto]. We have to reach them.” Along with face-painting and rest areas for families with young children, ruru25 had several interactive talks promoting sociopolitical engagement running at any given time.
Another big music festival two weeks prior, just after the demonstrations, also informed the project, Rakun says. Several bands pulled out upon discovering that the mining company Freeport was a sponsor. “People are particular about where the money comes from.” A shop at the exhibition included a large Indonesian indie music offering from those protesting bands, including Hindia, Feast and Sukatani, who this February was forced to pull and apologise for a song about police extortion. An outside section highlighted groups like WWF, Greenpeace and local groups dedicated to democracy and speech freedom, and a tribute to Indonesian human rights icon Munir Said Thalib, who was assassinated in 2004. “We say no to a lot of things over funding,” says Rakun, from 2022 and especially after October 2023. It’s easier to just drop places. All institutions have their politics, and now we ask [them], turning the tables.”
This year also included a governmental outreach bringing ten Asian curators to visit Art Jakarta, the Yogyakarta Biennale and other art events and studios. Represented institutions include Mori Art Museum, M+, the Lahore Biennale and the Sharjah Art Foundation. They were invited as part of the Golden Indonesia 2045 initiative started by Prabowo’s minister of culture Fadli Zon, who heads the country’s first standalone culture ministry and has asserted Indonesia’s potential to become the world’s cultural capital through traditional heritage, cuisine, sports and arts—an “Indonesian wave” echoing Korea’s cultural footprint.
Ruru25, meanwhile, hosted a talk by the prior president Joko Widodo’s director general of culture Hilmar Farid, who was a democracy activist in the 1990s. Rakun says ruangrupa’s members have been blacklisted by the new government, “because they are anti-Farid. They don’t care if we are famous”. However, Indonesia’s tourism ministries sponsored the exhibition. The new cultural ministry, he says, is “just about heritage, and Prabowo’s [17 October] birthday is now the official National Cultural Day. It’s nothing new, the same old same old.”
