Curatorial Culture
Throughout 2023, there were three art biennials held concurrently in Indonesia: the 17th Biennale Jogja, the 10th Biennale Jatim, and the 5th Biennale Makassar. Apart from these three biennials, the Jakarta Biennale holds the distinction of being the oldest biennial in Indonesia, with its origins dating back to 1974. At that time, the exhibition was still known as the Great Indonesian Painting Exhibition and was organized by the Jakarta Arts Council.
It is somewhat reassuring to witness the enduring presence of art biennials in Indonesia, despite the limited backing from the state and the scarcity of patrons supporting the continuation of large-scale artistic endeavors in the country.1 This shortage of resources may not be unique to Indonesia alone but appears to resonate with other art biennial organizers of the Global South nations, navigating through social, political, and economic instabilities.
By the late 2000’s, both the Jakarta Biennale and Biennale Jogja paved the way for internationalization by inviting artists, curators, and artistic teams from other nations. Asep Topan noted that this gesture to develop art biennials as internationally renowned showcases reflects the efforts of Indonesia’s contemporary art practitioners to engage in dialogues beyond their immediate contexts.2
However, as they entered the international circuit, Indonesia’s art biennials gradually seemed to distance themselves from local artists and audiences. Roy Voragen critiqued this trend, suggesting that the primary goal of Indonesian art biennials should be to engage more with the local audience. He argued that the pursuit of international recognition might lead not only to the neglect of local communities but also to a shift in the biennials’ legitimacy away from the local stakeholders.3
In recent times, the notion of locality has regained its prominence, bolstered by such concepts as decolonization, indigeneity, and translocality, among others. Besides looking outward, Indonesian art biennials have actively sought to re-establish forgotten connections with what exists within their own contexts. This evolution presents an intriguing subject for deeper examination to understand the possibilities and the underlying contexts.
Over the past five years, I have observed a shift in the model of art biennials in Indonesia. Firstly, Indonesian art biennials have begun to experiment with territorial concepts, opting for decentralization in their selection of venues. This choice seems influenced by the evolving notion of what is often regarded as the “center” and the increasing importance of presenting art in a more evenly distributed manner. Secondly, these art biennials have become more programmatic and open to community participation. While in the past, biennials emphasized the exhibition of contemporary artworks, current trends include other modes such as performances and public engagements, which are gaining significant prominence.
Through these two trends, I envision that the direction of organizing art biennials in Indonesia today aims to avoid being confined to mere exhibitions. Potentially, art biennials can serve as a social platform to build relationships, encourage physical mobility, create movements, and foster collectivity within community circles. I refer to this tendency as an attempt to create a “social choreography”. Loosely, I envision this term as an open possibility for a large-scale art performance to extend its impact beyond the confines of gallery walls by blending into the social spaces within the community. A sequence of curated programs allows the creation of dynamic spaces which foster the formation of temporary structures and new social relations among individuals or engaged communities.
We can observe this trend in the organization of the 17th Biennale Jogja, dispersed across 17 different locations. Most of these locations were chosen in two villages, Panggungharjo and Bangunjiwo, both situated in the southern part of Yogyakarta city. The choice of exhibition locations spread across these villages was unprecedented and broke with the traditional site of Biennale Jogja, which had been centered on two exhibition buildings: the Jogja National Museum (JNM) and the Taman Budaya Yogyakarta. One of the curatorial teams, Eka Putra Nggalu, indicated that selecting villages as the venue for the 17th Biennale Jogja was influenced by the chosen curatorial framework, “Titen: Embodied Knowledges-Shifting Grounds.” This theme emphasized the decolonization of knowledge production and the sustainability of situated knowledge that particularly survived in rural areas.
Utilizing the living spaces of residents as the venue for a biennial is a commendable effort, although it also poses a risk of appearing as an act of occupation, eventually marginalizing the villagers as contemporary art activities like these may seem disconnected from their daily lives. The curatorial team acknowledged this danger and attempted to address it by designing public programs familiar to the villagers. Despite a relatively short preparation time, the biennial’s designed programs appear somewhat incomplete and more experimental, where negotiation processes and participatory methods envisioned by artists are directly tested within the public sphere. Some have succeeded, while others have failed.4
The existence of a series of public programs in a biennial becomes significant as it acts as an effective bridge between artworks and artists with the general public. Without these public programs, art pieces showcased amidst communities might only remain as static and distant objects of observation. People unaccustomed to visual arts may perceive them as peculiar objects suddenly appearing in their living spaces. Therefore, activation programs to bridge the gap between residents and art pieces are highly necessary and should not be considered as mere additions. In the 17th Biennale Jogja, public programs and performances became independent art presentations on par with the exhibited artworks.5
The trend towards decentralized and programmatic biennials is also evident in the Biennale Jatim or East Java Biennale. This model started evolving in 2019 when the Biennale Jatim presented more than 65 programs spread across 16 cities. Two years later, the numbers doubled to 126 programs across all 38 cities in East Java province. This decentralized form of biennials, like an archipelago, aligns with the extensive geographical scope and is only made possible through the support of dozens of art collectives that have emerged in the past decade in East Java.
The curatorial framework adopted by the 10th Biennale Jatim is “Cultural Synthesis,” focusing on the cultural development in three geographical contexts in East Java: mountainous regions, coastal areas, and urban settings. This year, they continue a rhizomatic organizational model, encouraging public participation even though it may not be as extensive as in previous edition. Lucky Childa Pratama, part of the curatorial team of the 10th Biennale Jatim, emphasizes the significance of public programs and exchange programs as events that bring artists closer to the community.6 Such mutual encounters are possible, in part, because of the selection of biennial venues spread across various types of space, one of which is residential areas.
One of the venues of the 10th Biennale Jatim is located in Kampung Tambak Bayan, an old urban settlement mainly inhabited by the Chinese descendants. Over the past twenty years, the residents of Kampung Tambak Bayan have faced the threat of eviction due to conflicts over land ownership. During the organization of the 10th Biennale Jatim, the community actively participated in its preparation and organization. They were not just passive spectators distanced from these artistic activities; instead, they used the biennial as a platform to amplify their voices and movements to uphold their rights to living spaces.7
The Biennale Makassar has developed a more federative model of organization. Since 2019, they’ve collaborated with art collectives and youth groups from eastern parts of Indonesia, including South Sulawesi (Makassar, Bulukumba, Parepare, Pangkep); West Sulawesi (Polewali Mandar); East Nusa Tenggara (Labuan Bajo); and Central Papua (Nabire) to present the biennial in these cities. Organizers in each location have the freedom to determine artistic directions, select artists, and design their programs.
This initiative to diversify locations stems from recognizing the need to engage diverse audiences and address the lack of artistic infrastructure in these areas. Anwar Jimpe Rahman, Director of the Makassar Biennale, explains that hosting the biennial in cities previously absent from the art development map enables artists in those regions to cultivate artistic uniqueness contextualized with their daily experiences.8 Visitors and young volunteers also have the opportunity to exchange ideas with artists. The process of creative exchange between artists and local residents is invaluable, as the Biennale Makassar is aimed at fostering dialogue and knowledge production, serving as a link between various layers of society.9
The three aforementioned biennials, all of which are based outside the nation’s capital, significantly trigger the emergence of artistic expressions developed from situated knowledge. At the 17th Biennale Jogja, some participating artists embedded their works in the everyday spaces of local residents, such as the works of the artist-photographer Anang Saptoto, who in recent years initiated an artistic platform called “Panen Apa Hari Ini” (PARI) connecting art practices with agriculture. Through this platform, Anang Saptoto invited creative workers, farmers, and food producers to design various activities related to food sovereignty and community-based resolutions. During the Biennale Jogja, PARI connected a group of farmers and young architects to create a bamboo pavilion and solar panel installation in the middle of a papaya field owned by a farmer named Sadir Sudirman. Through these works, PARI connected various groups that had never been connected before, sparking an exchange of knowledge on an equal ground among them.
Similarly, various programs initiated by both Biennale Jatim and Biennale Makassar were capable of gathering and creating human mobility and knowledge on a broader geographical scale (between cities or even between islands) and thereby seem to have surpassed cultural initiatives that have come from the local governments where both biennials operate.
A program in the 5th Biennale Makassar titled “Songkabala Laelae,” initiated by the artist collective Gymnastic Emporium, is an effort to create social choreography through an artistic practice that enables artists and island residents to collaborate based on knowledge of the local environment, daily practices, and social issues. This program developed into a small festival where Gymnastic Emporium, whose members include directors, historians, visual artists, and musicians, reach further to become choreographers connecting potential artistic expressions that already exist in society. Furthermore, Biennale Makassar also publishes books that document narratives of local knowledge, such as traditional healing practices, culinary traditions, and even stories of the city’s development within the federated network they organize.
A different context of social choreography occurs in Biennale Jatim through various workshops and residencies that pair young artists with residents as collaborators. Besides bringing art practices closer to the living spaces of the community, artists can also engage in the exchange of situated knowledge that enriches their artistic practices. For instance, a performative work composed by artist Niina Brannen together with residents of Kampung Ketandan in Surabaya, or artist-researcher Alex De Little, who created a sound repertoire resulting from exceptional collaboration with residents and an artist collective in Nganjuk, a small town in East Java.
Based on such programs, biennials have the potential to kindle interconnections among artists, art collectives, and between artists and the public. We can also envision the dispersion of subtle traces created during immersive encounters, the formation of ideas through human mobility, community engineering, and knowledge production that may persist long after the biennial has concluded. This is what I envisage as a social choreography, where the biennial transforms into a dynamic space capable of shaping temporary structures and forging new relationships within society.
One recurring theme evident in the current arrangement of art biennials in Indonesia is the growing emphasis on the idea of the public and citizenship (kewargaan), and how this principle is manifested in art biennials that strategically embed their programs inclusively and democratically within local communities. This tendency ultimately transforms into a subversion of cultural programs initiated by the government, which are still traditionally confined to formal territories as conventionally understood. It can be observed from how the majority of government-initiated art programs often culminate solely as presentations at government-owned art centers, thereby failing to establish direct connections with the living spaces of the community.
1Financial grant was provided through the Directorate General of Culture of the Republic of Indonesia or local governments, although the funding has been a small fraction of the required resources to organize large-scale art activities.
2Asep Topan, “Dimensi Kelembagaan dalam Seni Rupa Kita: Pembacaan terhadap Jakarta Biennale dan Museum MACAN,” in Spektrum 2021: Enam Perspektif Seni Rupa Kontemporer Indonesia (2021), p. 57.
3Roy Voragen, “Biennale fever in Indonesia, Temporary sites for contemporary art,” Art Monthly Australia 265/November (2013), p.9-13.
4Personal interview with Eka Putra Nggalu on December 18, 2023. Eka Putra Nggalu is the co-curator of Biennale Jogja 17th and co-founder of KAHE Community, an interdisciplinary community using art as a medium to reflect on societal issues.
5Personal interview with Shohifur Ridho’i on December 18, 2023. Shohifur Ridho’i is one of the Curatorial Researchers and Coordinator of Activation Programs for Biennale Jogja 17th, working as an art curator, writer, and show director.
6Personal interview with Lucky Childa Pratama on December 18, 2023. Lucky Childa Pratama is one of the co-curators of Biennale Jatim 10th, researcher and a lecturer.
7 Presentation by Bintang C. Putra, one of the co-curators of Biennale Jatim 10th, at the RELATIONS Symposium Tokyo-East Java Linkages: The City, Community and Arts on October 29, 2023.
8Personal interview with Anwar Jimpe Rahman on December 20, 2023. Anwar Jimpe Rahman is the Director of Makassar Biennale, a writer, and the founder of the Tanahindie community.
9Anwar Jimpe Rahman, “Kembali Ke ‘Halaman Rumah’: Tawaran Perspektif Untuk Seni Urban,” NATAR Vol.1 No.1/March (2022), p. 25 – 40.
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Author
Ayos Purwoaji is a writer and curator who works at the intersection between history, architecture, and visual art. Since 2015, he has worked on a number of exhibitions and curatorial projects. Some of his projects represent his particular interest in the practice of vernacular archiving and collective memory. He co-founded the Surabaya Contemporary Heritage Council (SCHC), a multidisciplinary group that explores critical discourses on cultural heritage, especially in Southeast Asia. He is also a member of Kelompok Kurator Kampung, a collective that is experimenting with the idea of art involvement in social life and encouraging curatorial practice in the daily lives of marginalized communities. He works as a lecturer of cultural studies at Ciputra University, Surabaya.
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