aesciart – International Conference on Aesthetics and the Sciences of Art

The ‘80s

The dynamics of the 1980s had not been sufficiently studied and were rarely discussed, so it seems there were no significant events in the period. In contrast, the 1980s was a productive period with exhibitions, talks, and publications – that generated ideas, styles, prosperity, and optimism, as well as complaints, criticism, satire, skepticism, inferiority, and apathy. This is a decade after the 1970s – the iconic decade marked by many rhetorical acts in art. And before the heated controversy of postmodernism in the 1990s. The 1980s were unique because they provided across generations that confronted S. Sudjojono, the legendary figure of the late 1930s, with emerging artists such as Hardi debating the uncertainty of the identity of Indonesian art. The 1980s were also a period when artists increasingly demonstrated the attainment of their artistic creations in representing the national form and the national modern. This presentation will discuss the 1980s and why this period is essential in shaping the historiography of art.

Aminudin TH Siregar, menyelesaikan sarjana seni grafis dengan tema Petani pada 1997 dan magister di FSRD-ITB dengan judul tesis Analisa Diskursif Seni Rupa Modern Indonesia pada 2006. Sejak 1999 diangkat menjadi Pegawai Negeri dan dosen tetap di FSRD-ITB, aktif bekerja sebagai kurator pameran, menulis kritik di sejumlah media massa, menerbitkan dan menulis buku BlupArt! (pod, 1999), Seni Lukis Baru: Setelah Seni Non Representasional di Bandung (2004), Sang Ahli Gambar: Sketsa, Gambar dan Pemikiran S. Sudjojono (2011); menyunting buku Modern Miring (2005) dan Seni Rupa Modern: Esai-esai Pilihan (2006). Pada 2002 melakukan riset kuratorial di New York atas dukungan Asian Cultural Council selama 3 bulan; program residensi kurator di Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne, Australia selama 1,5 bulan (2005); meriset Seni Rupa Indonesia di Masa Pendudukan Jepang: Keimin Bunka Shidosho di Fukuoka Asian Art Museum (FAAM, 2008), Fukuoka, Jepang selama 3 bulan; mengikuti lokakarya Museum and Cultural Heritage di Belanda selama 1 bulan (2014); menerima grant dan mengikuti lokakarya Reconciliation And Cultural Recovery Program dari Australian Award Fellowship di University of Melbourne selama 1 bulan (2014); menjadi ajun kurator di The National Gallery of Singapore untuk masa kerja 1 tahun (2014-2015). Saat ini sedang meneliti masalah sejarah seni rupa Indonesia – kandidat Ph.D di Universitas Leiden.

Categories of Conversion through Colonial Form: A Review of Concepts

A key moment in the production of colonial form is conversion, which has attracted an array of explications through the tropes of uncanny likeness and inventive mingling. This keynote revisits how material transformations take place through the colonial condition and how colonial form may be regarded as internally contradictory and transformative. Through four examples, it tries to attentively annotate this dynamic of conversion in the lexicon of creative form that is derived from a graveyard stone artifact; the historical painting of a rebellion; the image of Christ and its devotions; and the ornamented transport for land and sea. This reflection implicates cognate instances from different historical and social contexts, proposing a method of writing art history that constellates as it historicizes. Attending this discussion is a review of certain concepts that lead to theoretical imaginations of the “colonial,” or the problem of the colonial as a legacy, and how different modes of variations may be anticipated in reconsidering the categories of conversion.

Prof. Patrick Flores
Patrick D. Flores is a Professor of Art Studies at the Department of Art Studies at the University of the Philippines, which he chaired from 1997 to 2003. Flores is also Artistic Director of ingapore Biennale 2019, Curator of the Vargas Museum in Manila, and Adjunct Curator at the National Art Gallery, Singapore. He was one of the curators of Under Construction: New Dimensions in Asian Art 2000), the Gwangju Biennale (Position Papers) in 2008, and the curator of the Philippine Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2015. Flores was a Visiting Fellow at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, .C. in 1999 and an Asian Public Intellectuals Fellow in 2004. Among his publications are Painting History: Revisions in Philippine Colonial Art (1999); Remarkable Collection: Art, History, and the National Museum (2006); and Past Peripheral: Curation in Southeast Asia (2008). He was a grantee of the Asian Cultural Council (2010); a member of the Advisory Board of the exhibition The Global Contemporary: Art Worlds After 1989 (2011), organized by the Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe; and a member of the Guggenheim Museum’s Asian Art Council (2011). He co-edited the Southeast Asian issue with Joan Kee for Third Text (2011). On behalf of the Clark Institute and the Department of Art Studies of the University of the Philippines, Flores organized the conference “Histories of Art History in Southeast Asia” in Manila.

Unsettling ‘Asian Art’: From Bandung to Greater India, from Local Genius to the Global South – Towards Alternative Mobile Histories

How to decolonize art? What is it we actually want to transform if we take decolonizing as an act of changing power structures in the appreciation, taxation, and makings of art? The upheaval in Germany around the 2022 Documenta exhibition in Kassel, curated by the Indonesian artists collective Ruangrupa, not only was painful and contraproductive for what was intended as an exploratory, ‘decolonizing’ conversation. It also seems to have reified and strengthened contradictory and essentializing framings that presume, on the one hand, ideas of Universal Art, and on the other hand specific standards for Art from ‘the’ North and ‘the’ South. This binary thinking resonates with the early twentieth century invention of ‘arts from Greater India’ (versus art from a western Roman-Greek civilization) that encapsulated artifacts produced in todays South and Southeast Asia as ‘Indian’ – an image that lingers on in Galleries, Museums and academic art-historical teaching. What then, might we consider colonial, and what local about the forms of knowledge, histories, categorizing and taxonomies of ‘Asian Art’ across colonial and postcolonial times?

Starting at the ITB in Bandung in early independent Indonesia, and moving back and forth in time, and between Indonesia, mainland Asia, and the West, in this lecture I will explore how social biographies of objects recognized as ‘Asian art’, moving within and away from Indonesia, can lead us away from such framings, to needful, alternative, mobile histories and alternative understandings of Art. The charmed networks of artists, experts, and cultural entrepreneurs that ‘made’ these objects, while often crossing the divide of colonial boundaries and driven by anti-colonial motives (Gandhi 2006) built upon, I argue, and facilitated, various nationalist and ‘transnational’ hegemonic structures across decolonization, that reified notions of a Greater Indian art, versus nation-centred ideas of local genius. Yet, alternative, unsettling forms of knowledge (beyond the categories and methods of Art history) and the alternative contexts that shaped the social live of objects (beyond ‘provenance’, the gallery, and the museum of Asian art), can lead us away from such framings, towards more social, and mobile understandings of Art that deserve to become part of the way we think of, and present art. While my focus is on what came to be categorized as (ancient) ‘Asian Art’, methodologically this experiment may be insightful for the way we still look at, and ‘make’ modern art from Southeast Asia, and thus for love and its potential epistemic violence.

Prof. Dr. Marieke Bloembergen
Marieke Bloembergen is a senior researcher at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV), and a professor in Heritage and Postcolonial Studies in Indonesian History at Leiden University. Her research interests concern the political dynamics of cultural knowledge production in colonial and post-colonial Indonesia, as understood in their local, inter-Asian, and global dimensions, in relation to material culture, heritage practices, religion, policing, and violence. Her most recent monograph, co-authored with Martijn Eickhoff, is The politics of heritage in Indonesia. A cultural history (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: 2020). Currently, she is working on the book manuscript Indonesia and the Greater Indian mindset. Moveable objects, enchanted knowledge networks, 1880s-1990s.

Adjacencies and Affinities: Curatorial Calibrations of Southeast Asia

Abstract:

The proposed paper studies the ways in which curatorial and exhibitionary labors flesh out expansive articulations of Southeast Asia through two iterative exhibitions of contemporary art: South by Southeast (2016 – ) and Afro-Southeast Asia: Pragmatics and Geopoetics of Art during a Cold War (2021 – ). Curated by Patrick Flores with other curators, South by Southeast is an exhibition series presented at the Osage Gallery in Hong Kong. The exhibition presented a latitude of thinking about “southeast” as an epistemological category in relation to other coordinates of “southeast.” In its first iteration, the exhibition juxtaposed Southeast Asia with Southeast Europe curated by Romanian curator Anca Verona Mihulet. Its second exhibition paired Southeast Asia with South Africa and the Caribbean, curated by Natasha Becker. The exhibition Afro-Southeast Asia, meanwhile, is an exhibition that traveled from Singapore to Manila to Busan in South Korea. Curated by Kathleen Ditzig and myself, the project reviews and sharpens the legacies of the Afro-Asian Conference in Bandung by proposing Southeast Asia as a framework for revisiting African and Asian affinities and solidarity. It delves into the shifting rhetorics that defined Southeast Asia, from Maphilindo, the Far East, and other related lexicon. The paper proposed for this conference interrogates how curatorial and exhibitionary gestures may loosen art historical methodologies for these to accommodate errant configurations of the regional that depart from nation-bound understandings and through which coordinates of coloniality may also be recast and recalibrated.

Carlos Quijon, Jr is an art historian, critic, and curator based in Manila and a graduate student at the University of the Philippines. In 2019 and 2020, he was a fellow of the research platform Modern Art Histories in and across Africa, South, and Southeast Asia (MAHASSA), convened by the Getty Foundation’s Connecting Art Histories project.He writes exhibition reviews for Artforum (NY), Frieze (UK), and CNN Philippines. His essays are part of the books SEA: Contemporary Art in Southeast Asia (Berlin: Weiss Publications, 2022), Writing Presently (Manila: Philippine Contemporary Art Network, 2019), and From a History of Exhibitions Towards a Future of Exhibition-Making: China and Southeast Asia (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2019), Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art, Afro-Asian Visions, MoMA’s post (US), Queer Southeast Asia Singapore, among others. He curated Courses of Action in Hong Kong (Para Site and Goethe-Institut Hong Kong, 2019); co-curated

All the way from Mecca: The place of Indonesia in the field of Islamic art

In the last decades, there has been a repeated call to expand the field of Islamic art to include hitherto excluded geographical areas, such as Southeast Asia. Often these appeals depart from the assumption that expanding the canon will confirm its underlying thesis of the spread of a particular visual culture through the Islamic religion. Some scholars have nonetheless argued that geographical expansion will substantially challenge the conceptual parameters underpinning the canon. This paper will look into the historical reasons behind the exclusion of Indonesia from the field of Islamic art and what they tell us today about the various meanings attached to Islam as a religion, culture and a type of art.

The focus of this talk will be gravestones with Arabic inscriptions, which were among the few objects that were studied in the colonial period as part of Islamic artistic production. It will highlight the colonial and postcolonial histories of gravestones from Aceh as they moved through different regimes of image-making, and how these histories impact the reception of Indonesian Islamic art today. What are the structural patterns inherited from colonialism that result in silences today? How can repair happen beyond repatriation and re-interpretation of individual objects?

Mirjam Shatanawi is lecturer of Heritage Theory at the Reinwardt Academy (Amsterdam University of the Arts) and teaches Islamic art at the University of Amsterdam. Between 2001 and 2018, she was associated with the National Museum of World Cultures (the Netherlands) as curator for the Middle Eastern and North African collections. She is the author of Islam at the Tropenmuseum (2014) and co-editor of Islam and heritage in Europe: Pasts, Presents and Future Possibilities (Routledge, 2021). She holds a PhD from the the University of Amsterdam. Her PhD thesis Making and unmaking Indonesian Islam: legacies of colonialism in museums discusses the silences surrounding Indonesian Islam in Dutch museums.

The Art Worlds of Singapore

The ‘art world’ of Singapore leading up to its independence in 1965 was a fascinating period with contesting ideologies and various cultural stakeholders – both institutional and private individuals. Exhibitions of both art and craft were in full swing, not to mention the performing arts, towards aspirations of an independent Malaya, free from British administration. Questions of what constitutes a ‘Malayan art’ surfaced in tandem with the multi-cultural discourse – a tantalizing prospect that subsequently yielded differing political results for both Singapore and Malaysia.

Adopting Howard Becker’s sociological framework of mapping the ‘art worlds’ of a particular community or society, this paper is an attempt to study the early museological impulses and the private-public patronage of the arts in Singapore, to understand how certain colonial legacies continue to affect the way museums have developed here. More importantly, these social dynamics not only affected the way the arts were consumed by the public but also, how they have been understood and later regarded as conventions.

Syed Muhammad Hafiz was part of the inaugural curatorial team at the National Gallery Singapore from 2012 – 2018. Notable exhibitions there include ‘Iskandar Jalil: Clay Travels’ and ‘Between Worlds: Raden Saleh and Juan Luna’. Subsequently, he left the museum to pursue his Ph.D. studies at the National University of Singapore while continuing his independent curatorial practice which included working with various private art galleries and collectors in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. Earlier this year in 2022 he joined the Malay Heritage Centre, a heritage institution under the National Heritage Board, as Curator.

Gluing the boundaries back together so we can see our past

What becomes of Aboriginal Australian art, if, instead of a European colony or a Pacific east coast versus Indian Ocean Asian west coast discourse, we begin to reimagine the removal of boundaries through cultural practice and art, by focusing on Australia’s geographical location in Asia? As Francois Julien suggests in The great image has no form, or on the nonobject through painting, the Chinese literati produced paintings based on the notion of a continuum of existence. And for us, he writes, it is an ’invitation to explore the gap opened in the ontological status of form’ (2009, xvi). Seeking other ways of engaging with thought, as Julien acknowledges here, this play between east and west, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, in Australia has significant ramifications both in debunking the national psyche of the European nation isolated from other white societies to its original location as a continent in the Asia-Pacific, this all needs further consideration. With the aim of thinking through a new Aboriginal Art history that is inclusive of Australia and Asia.

Vanessa Russ is a Senior Lecture in Indigenous Studies at the School of Culture and Communication, Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne. Having been a Research Fellow in Indigenous Studies at the Centre for Health Equity in the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health; and the former Associate Director of the Berndt Museum of Anthropology at the University of Western Australia.Russ is a Ngarinyin-Gija women from the Kimberley Region, Western Australia. Her work on Australian Aboriginal art history includes A History of Aboriginal Art in the Art Gallery of New South Wales (2021). Russ is interested in the reframing of art and history from a local Aboriginal Australian worldview, without losing the impact of diaspora in contemporary Australia. She believes that reconstructing histories to include the place we live, draws upon the past to inform the future.

Uses of the Past: Agus Suwage and Zico Albaiquni

The economic, administrative, governmental and military manifestations of colonial control in Southeast Asia and elsewhere were crucially supported and legitimised by regimes of colonial visuality. From the later 18th century into the early 20th, images of colonised countries and their inhabitants—human and non-human—were energetically produced and widely disseminated in service of the governing logic of colonial conquest and domination. Primarily (but not exclusively) produced by European artists, surveyors and administrators, such images served to naturalise the epistemological and political violence of colonial operations. This paper addresses the use of colonial imagery in the contemporary paintings of two Indonesian artists of different generations (both Bandung alumni), Agus Suwage and Zico Albaiquni. I propose that their reappropriation and deployment of imagery produced during or through colonial operations follow an important principle visible in feminist as well as Global South art practices, that of exposing the insult and using the language/ gestures/ imagery of power to disabuse oneself. Through my analysis of the work of these two artists, I hope to show how contemporary artists can maintain an active and interrogative dialogue with the intertwined histories of modernity and colonialism. I also seek to show how this dialogue with the past can inform and condition contemporary practice internationally.

Chaitanya Sambrani is an art historian and curator interested in modern and contemporary art in Asia, especially in relation to tradition, marginality and politics. He is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Art History and Art Theory in the School of Art and Design at the Australian National University, Canberra, where he has taught (since 2001) courses on modernist and contemporary art in Asia. He serves as Convenor of Higher Degrees by Research, overseeing the School of Art and Design’s MPhil and PhD programs. He has published widely and curated major exhibitions of contemporary art in Australia, India, China and the USA. Chaitanya is a Curatorial Advisor to the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, and to the LaTrobe Art Institute in Bendigo, Victoria.

Stories Left Untold: Reexamining Trauma in Indonesian Visual Arts

Southeast Asia is a region where traumatic legacies of colonialism persist and where lives have been lost due to revolution, civil war, genocide, and natural catastrophes. Trauma theory has evolved as an essentialtheoretical tool to analyse literary and cultural forms that have emerged in the aftermath of catastrophic experiences of human suffering. However, existing scholarships centred on trauma as a field within Western experiences, which tends to negate non-Western experiences. This presentation explores culturally-specific trauma symptoms that manifest within Indonesian society, framed through the lens of artistic practices. Specifically, it will discuss contemporary artworks and projects by Indonesian and transnational artists that engage with the memories of genocide and mass violence in modern Indonesian history. It will highlight the multidisciplinary, transgenerational aspects and transformative actions in these artistic practices responding to trauma. The presentation seeks to broaden the scope of trauma studies in visual arts by reconsidering whether existing trauma theories are viable to the histories, present states and futures in the non-Western world.

Wulan Dirgantoro is an art historian and Lecturer in Art History and Curatorship at the School of Culture and Communication, the University of Melbourne. Her research interests are gender and feminisms, memory and trauma in modern and contemporary Indonesian art. She is currently working on a research project on historical violence and contemporary art in Indonesia and Timor-Leste.

George Coedès’ Critical Philology

For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, a diffusionist theory that culture emanated from the “civilization” of India and spread to much of Southeast Asia buttressed Europe’s power over its colonies. Such a theory favored high art and the refined language of elites (i.e. Sanskrit) over vernacular languages and cultures, and kept social hierarchies in place in the colonies. But if epigraphist, historian, and one-time director of the École Française d’Extrême-Orient George Coedès (1886-1969)’s Indianized States of Southeast Asia (1968) once represented the most cogent articulation of diffusion theory, the book is hardly read today. Archaeologist Michael Vickery went so far as to declare the book “obsolete.” Via a close reading of one of Coedès’ early essays, I show how he developed a complex understanding of what I am calling “epigraphic form.” By seeing Coedès’ enterprise as a critical philology – with philology being that branch of knowledge that deals with the structure and development of languages – I aim to show that his work was more advanced, and more ahead of his time, than has previously been allowed. A deconstructive reading reveals an anti-diffusionist side to his thinking, and a complex understanding of the performative materiality of religious objects. Ironically, philology – the discipline once derided by Edward Said for its complicity with colonialism – may be, for us today, the discipline that can best undo colonialism’s authority.

Kevin Chua is Associate Professor of Art History at Texas Tech University, USA. He obstained his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, USA, in 2005, and teaches on a wide range of 18th- and 19th-century European and Southeast Asian art. He has published in journals and magazines such as Art History, Representations, Artforum, Third Text, Yishu, nonsite, and FOCAS, and has curated the exhibitions Assembling Animal Communication at the Landmark Arts Gallery, Texas Tech University, and Wolfcamp Catalogue, at the University of Texas Permian Basin. He is currently working on a book on Southeast Asian modernism.

Colonial Legacies in the Study of Buddhist and Hindu Metal Statues of Indonesia

Since the nineteenth century, the region we call Southeast Asia today has been defined as the passive recipient of a superior Hindu-Buddhist civilisation originating in India. This thinking has greatly impacted the interpretation of archaeological remains which have been categorised as Hindu and Buddhist. Studies were often limited to tracing their styles and iconographies to Indian origins, as well as differentiating their local variations. Narratives in academic writing and in museums on the developments of statuary and temple art in Southeast Asia still start with a discussion of India as a source. Based on my research on Buddhist and Hindu bronze statues from the Indonesian archipelago, I address the continuing legacies of colonial scholarship on these materials and explore potential avenues to re-evaluate knowledge production on art from Indonesia and other parts of Southeast Asia. This starts with questioning the myth that Hindu and Buddhist archaeological objects from India are better understood or dated than those from Southeast Asia, through a deconstruction of the seemingly fixed chronologies produced by British colonial scholarship. Although art historians have traditionally attempted to reconstruct a linear evolution of artistic developments in a clear chronological sequence, multidisciplinary methodologies can generate new perspectives that transgress established categories and limited perceptions. Art historical methods, in tandem with archaeometallurgy, archaeology and religious studies inform us on the techniques used by artisans, on the cults that were once active in the Indonesian archipelago and, through comparisons, on the religious practices shared with other regions, as well as on artistic and technological exchanges.

Mathilde Mechling received her PhD in 2020 from University Sorbonne Nouvelle and Leiden University. Her thesis, which she is currently adapting into a book publication titled Bronze Images of Indonesia: Artistic and Religious Networks Across Asia (c. 6th–10th century), critically engages with the legacies of colonial scholarship and develops an interdisciplinary methodology to study the bronzes.

‘Local Genius’ in the Archeology of Indonesia: Historical Development and the Colonial Legacy

This paper provides a close reading on how the idea of ‘local genius’ was received and developed by Indonesian scholars in the second half of the 20th century. Developed in the field of art history and archaeology, the idea is one of the responses to Indianisation debate. The Indonesian Association of Archaeologists organised a concerted effort in the 1980s to streamline the celebration of ‘local genius’ for the stylistic and architectural production of Hindu-Buddhist art originating from the 5th and 15th centuries. The archaeologists utilise this interpretative framework to argue for the primacy of indigenous communities as the main initiators for selecting and modifying Indic models into the preexisting Indonesian cultures. Albeit its objective to turn the tide, the framework nonetheless glorifies the Hindu-Buddhist tradition as the pinnacle of artistic and cultural development in Indonesia by maintaining the ‘Indianisation’ model which necessarily privileges an Indic source. In this sense, ‘local genius’ in the archaeology of Indonesia contributes to cementing the colonial construct hierarchy of arts, which assumes a decline in monumental production since the 16th century when Islamic construction gradually came to the fore.

Panggah Ardiyansyah is a PhD candidate of History of Art and Archaeology at SOAS University of London. His research focuses on the afterlives of Hindu-Buddhist materials in pre-modern Indonesia, which contributes to decolonizing Indonesian art history and archaeology. It aims to deconstruct the rigid categorization opposing the classical period and the subsequent Islamic artistic tradition and to reconstruct the long history of ancient Hindu-Buddhist materials across times and cultures in probing appropriations, transactions and reconfigurations.

Japanese Wartime Artists and Collectives in Indonesia 1942-1945

Throughout the Japanese occupation, the Japanese authorities sought to mobilise Indonesian artists for propaganda in support of the ‘Greater East Asian War’. In an unprecedented event in Indonesian history, art came under centralised supervision and it became an important platform for serving and disseminating the idea of Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. Japanese artists (as part of bunkajin; lit. “men of culture”; civilian propagandist) who were sent to Indonesia played an influential mediating role between the occupier and the occupied, the commander and the commanded, especially during the crucial early stages of the occupation, in particular in Java. In this role they solicited and received assistance from local influential figures, including Indonesian nationalist artists and members of the intelligentsia. There can be no doubt, to a large extent, such external forces shaped cooperation with the Japanese military government. But recent scholarship has began to explore a more interactive relationship between the military and the people. Sheldon Garon (2003), for example, has shown that the state-oriented wartime savings campaign was successful because the people themselves played an active role in forming that culture of thrift. Cooperation between the state and the civilian came about not only because of top-down control, but also because civilians internalized the dominant wartime ideology or else to pursue their own interests. My study will explore a more complex picture of art in Japanese-occupied Indonesia through the lens of Japanese artists and Japanese wartime artists collectives: their works, ideological formation, and activities in Indonesia.

Antariksa is an independent historian and artist. His main research interest is art history and mobility of ideas in 1930s-1940s Japanese-occupied Asia. In 1999 he co-founded KUNCI Study Forum & Collective (Yogyakarta, Indonesia), a collective focusing on experiments with methods in producing and sharing knowledge through the acts of studying together at the intersections between affective, manual and intellectual labor. Antariksa has been a research fellow at art and academic institutions including Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Ujazdowski Centre for Contemporary Art, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art, ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute, and Foundation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme. Antariksa uses exhibitions as a medium to make archives and their stories public, physical and interactive. His installations have been presented at, among others, Europalia, Taman Ismail Marzuki, Sharjah Biennial, Asian Art Biennial, Gallery SOAP Kitakyushu, Contemporary Art Museum Kumamoto, and Orange Regional Gallery, Australia. Currently he is a visiting curator and lecturer at l’École National Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris.

Rusli and the Concept of the Artist as Cosmopolitan Poet

In this paper, I will demonstrate how the painter Rusli (1916-2005) translated the concept of the artist as cosmopolitan poet into his drawings and paintings. Rusli’s works combine a modernist singularity of the moment and a poetic economy of lines and color fields that aim to achieve maximum effect with minimum means of production. By connecting Rusli’s work to his biographical data, I trace how his poetic, cosmopolitan outlook is culturally and geopolitically situated within decolonization processes in transregional education and art networks that existed between late colonial Indonesia and India. In this educational context, the ideal of a “union in harmony” that is both cosmopolitan and allows for free self-expression and artistic autonomy is crucial. This paper outlines how these ideals were put into educational and artistic practice by teachers like the Indian modernist painter Nandalal Bose, who directed the art school in Santiniketan, where Rusli studied from 1932-1938. Upon his return to the Dutch East Indies, Rusli joined the Taman Siswa school as a teacher and the artist collective Seniman Indonesia Muda (SIM), arguably introducing his views on art to his network in Yogyakarta. Through an analysis of critical positions about Rusli’s work in the 1950s, I demonstrate that his oeuvre presents a challenge to monolithic nationalist art historical discourse on modern art from Indonesia and its geographical limitations, not just to gain a better understanding of Rusli’s work, but to extent the global discourse on modern art with a cosmopolitan perspective from the Indonesian context.

Kerstin Winking is a PhD candidate at the Institute for History at Leiden University and a guest researcher at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV). Kerstin holds a BA in Art History and completed a research MA in Cultural Analysis (University of Amsterdam). Her PhD research explores the cultural and political legacy of colonialism and Cold War on modern art and the biographies of artists, and takes Indonesia between 1920-1970 as the regional point of departure.

Artistic Practice as Transformation, Learning, Awakening, and Agency

My name is Tiong Ang, I am an artist and I live and work in and from Amsterdam, the Netherlands. My artistic practice combines a conceptual approach to media art with the intuitive process of collaboration to address issues of hybrid identity, lapsed memory, mediatized human experience, and sociopolitical alienation. I aim to reveal gaps between ideas of authenticity and structures of narration and mediation. My work ranges from solitary painted images to complex collaborative projects that incorporate cinematic production, alternative forms of research, pedagogy, and performative situations to highlight the tension between a subjective, individual point of view and collective, normative order. I experiment with notions of shared authorship, ways of working together, and decolonial versions of ‘entrepreneurship’.

Born in Indonesia, I emigrated to the Netherlands as a young child, as the aftermath of the dark times of the ‘year of living dangerously, 1965. These truths were hidden from me for many years, and I became an artist at a time (the 1990s) when art was in a transitional phase, shaking off dominant Western modernism, and multiculturalism was considered fresh and accepted. My late return to Indonesia as an artist (in 2002, the year of the Bali bombings) caused a political landslide in my perspective and thinking. Working from a Dutch context, my work has been labeled by others from the beginning: neo-conceptual, post-modern, orientalist, ethnographic, migratory, post-colonial, identity-questioning, and in recent years performative, collectivist, transdisciplinary, and decolonial have also been added. In this presentation, I try to face my personal trajectory in these changing contexts and vocabularies, but also to contest my so-called autonomy ‘beyond’ these labels.

Tiong Ang was born in Surabaya, Indonesia in 1961; he grew up in Middelburg, the Netherlands and studied at the Rietveld Academy and Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam, and had residencies in Senegal, New York, Germany, South Africa, China, and Indonesia. He has participated in numerous projects and exhibitions worldwide including the 1994 Havana Biennale, the 1995 Istanbul Biennial, the 2001 Venice Biennale, and the 2004 and 2008 Shanghai Biennales, and more recently at the Manifesta 8 Biennale in Murcia, the Yogyakarta Biennale 2013, 5th Guangzhou Triennial in 2015, and the Bucharest Biennale 2022.

Images Are Available: A Discussion on Collection-based Curatorship

The accessibility of art collections in Indonesia, both public and private, has been problematic. In the past, the public museum was often perceived as the storage of donated artworks with minimal awareness for program development or research. In this situation, there has been an absence of space to question written histories, which was probably a status quo condition that was maintained to support the stability of the ruling government.

In the private sector, especially during the New Order period in Indonesia, art critics Sanento Yuliman saw the symptom of private collecting through an art market “boom” between 1980 to the early 1990s, where Indonesian modern art becomes a commodity to private collectors. However, the private roles have several impacts, one of which is the “seclusion” of art known as “pingit” in Sanento’s expression where paintings flow from exhibitions to a collection of collectors (or companies) that are inaccessible to the public.

In the 2000s, especially after the 2010s, private museums began to establish in Java with various public access policies. The public collection, such as Galeri Nasional Indonesia and Museum Seni Rupa Keramik Jakarta has slowly improved through the making of the collection’s new narratives. As a response to this development, this presentation aims to share the possibilities of collection-based curatorial work, a developing area in Indonesia’s curatorial practice as a consequence of the new open access to public and private collections. The presentation will include a study case of the “POSE” exhibition at Museum MACAN (2022) that presented the Indonesian Modern Art from the collection of MSRK and Museum MACAN.

Sally Texania currently served as the curator of Museum MACAN. She has curated important exhibitions such as: “Senandung Ibu Pertiwi”, the Presidential Palaces of the Republic of Indonesia Senandung Ibu Pertiwi at the National Gallery of Indonesia (2017-2018); The New Narrative of Museum of Fine Art and Ceramic Permanent Collection (2019); ESOK, Jakarta Biennale (2021). Between 2014 – 2016 she served as head of the museum of Ciputra Artpreneur Museum. in 2018 she was selected as an International Research Fellow of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Korea (MMCA), Seoul.

(Re)Constructing the Discourse of the “Islamic” in Modern and Contemporary Art in Indonesia

While the exhibitionary practice under the loose category of “modern Islamic art” only began in the early 1970s in Indonesia, the intellectual discussion of kesenian Islam (Islamic arts) and aesthetics have taken place since at least the 1950s, notably in the field of literature. The political contestation during the early period of decolonization and the Cold War affected the initial efforts as discussions related to Islamic arts and culture figured along with political issues. Despite the gap in time and practice, one can see the continuity of thoughts and ideas in the formulation of kesenian Islam in the conceptualization of seni rupa Islam (Islamic art) pioneered by artists and intellectuals, such as Ahmad Sadali (1924-1987) and A.D. Pirous (b. 1932).

History of Islamic art exhibitions from the early 1970s onward cemented the mainstream imagination and canonization of “modern Islamic art” in Indonesia that put forward the importance of religious piety as (visibly) manifested through artworks. However, these exhibitions also contributed to pushing the boundaries of Islamic art as a practice beyond its canonical practice and conception in Indonesia. This paper attempts to historicize the different voices of artists and intellectuals recorded in manifestoes, exhibition catalogs, and reviews as they navigated both the porousness and rigidity of the “modern” and the “Islamic” as categories of discourse and practice.

Anissa Rahadiningtyas is an art historian working on the position and question of Islamic religiosity, rituals, and performances in the works of modern and contemporary art in Indonesia and Southeast Asia. She received her Ph.D. from Cornell University and is currently an assistant curator of Islamic aesthetics in modern and contemporary Southeast Asia at the National Gallery Singapore. Her research interests include comparative modernisms, Indian Ocean studies, postcolonial and decolonial theories, gender and feminism, environmentalism, and Islamic studies.

Timur Merah Project: A Pilgrimage of Narrative, Memory, and Historical Legacy

Timur Merah (The East is Red) is Sasmita’s long-term art project that seeks to trace and reread the history and narratives that exist in the archipelago, especially in Bali.

This paper first undertakes a brief mapping of the presence of women in canonical texts, showing how they are limited to stereotypical depictions of women as procreative and sexual objects. It proposes a counter reading of powerful women, such as I Dewa Istri Kanya, Queen of the 19th c. Klungkung kingdom, as leaders and resistors.

The second part of this paper tracks the effects of the male gaze on women, art and the island as it transforms into the Dutch colonial gaze, determining what is “authenticity” in Bali and deciding what/who should be deemed valuable in shaping Balinese artistic heritage.

Citra Sasmita is a contemporary artist from Bali whose work focuses on unraveling the myths and misconceptions of Balinese art and culture. She is also deeply invested in questioning a woman’s place in social hierarchy and seeks to upend normative constructions of gender. Sasmita studied Literature at Udayana University (2008) and Physics Education at the Faculty of Mathematics and Sciences, Ganesha University of Education. Before she decided to become an artist, she worked as an illustrator for Bali Post and deepened her self-taught knowledge of the world of art. Sasmita is the Gold Winner UOB Painting of the Year 2017 and her work has been shown in the solo exhibitions such as ‘Ode To The Sun’ (2020, Yeo Workshop-Gillman Barracks, Singapore), and ‘#Perempuan’ (2021, Castlemaine Museum of Art, Sydney); and in group exhibitions, such as , ‘Garden Of The Six Seasons’ (2020, ParaSite, Hong Kong), and the Kathmandu Triennale (2022, Patan Museum, Kathmandu). She received the Studio Residencies for Southeast Asian Artist by NTU CCA Singapore at the WIELS Centre d’Art Contemporain in Brussels. In addition, she also received a commission for the 2020-2021 UOB Museum MACAN Commission for Children Art Space for her work Tales of Nowhere.

Javanese antique objects and their transformation into 'Art’

Javanese antique objects from the Hindu and Buddhist period were found and collected throughout the nineteenth century. After the middle of the nineteenth century in particular, it were mostly Europeans and a few Javanese aristocrats who collected the objects. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the objects started to be considered autonomous art for the first time, rather than heritage.

Male European scholars, in particular, with their interpretations and rejections of other possible views, determined the position of such objects in a Western hegemonic ‘art-culture’ system, with its classifications and hierarchies (Clifford 1988: 224; Quijano 2000).

This is a cultural colonial legacy that continues to this day and excludes local agency and other meanings, interpretations and forms of knowledge about the objects.

Using the socio-cultural biography of some of the objects, I will show how this process of knowledge production evolved, how it is grounded in coloniality (Quijano 2000 / Mignolo 2011), and how we might approach this Javanese antique art decolonially.

Caroline Drieënhuizen is a historian, specialised in colonial Indonesia, and works as an assistant professor at the Open University in the Netherlands. She is interested in collecting in colonial Indonesia, the biography of objects, cultural decolonisation in both the Netherlands and Indonesia and museology.

Travel Albums and the Formulation of 19th Southeast Asian Photographic Traditions

Photographers in 19th Southeast Asia operated in a complex regional network of partnership, competition and apprenticeship beyond the spatial boundaries of colonial states. This paper will look at their role in formulating the thematic (views and types, monuments and antiquity, industrial and family photographs) and pictorial commonplace (as in landscape and studio portraiture) of the photographic representation of the region. Geographical proximity and the region’s shared condition of colonial relations is one explanation, whilst market demand is another one. This paper will identify patterns of photographers’ network and mobility in 19thcentury Southeast Asia, which made possible regional transfer, distribution and development of the region’s photographic tradition. Comparative analysis of a few photographs will make a case for how certain artistic inclinations passed from one photographer to another, whilst they negotiated tropical condition and clientele’s aspirations. For the latter, this paper will showcase Southeast Asia travel albums as they captured thematic and artistic negotiations between colony-based photographers and visitors in the region, between insiders and outsiders. This largely understudied Southeast Asian photographic material might offer technological and visual links between the region’s diverse visual traditions and therefore, I will argue, played a role in the formulation of the region’s photographic tradition. The analysis will be pursued through contrasting examples of travel albums drawn from the collection of the Tropenmuseum and Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.

Alexander Supartono is an art historian and curator specialising in modern and contemporary art in Southeast Asia. He obtained a PhD in History of Photography from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. He lectures on photographic theories and histories at the Edinburgh Napier University. Recent curatorial activities include the presentation of Taring Padi collective at the Documenta Fifteen in Kassel Germany (2022). Presently he is one of principal investigators in Getty Research Institute’s “Photography Unbound” project that explores computational methods to analyse large collections of digital images and the application computer vision to art historical questions.

Towards a Decolonial Aesthesis in Curating and Producing Indonesian Artists

This presentation offers a contribution to the discussion on artistic, curatorial and producing strategies for decolonizing history and art. I will address the question how curatorial projects aim at transgressing established categories and limited perceptions of art to acknowledge and encourage more diverse points of view that better resonate with contemporary societies.

My broad cultural practice combines working as an independent curator and producer with research activities at VU University and Melbourne University. My work concerns decolonizing Indonesian history and art, and is deeply inspired by decolonial thinkers from South America like Aníbal Quijano, María Lugones, Walter Mignolo and Catherine Walsh, as well as Rolando Vázquez. Mignolo and Walsh (2018) pose that decoloniality is as much a concept, as it is an analytical tool and a praxis, which I strive to embed in my work.

In this presentation I will highlight two projects on which I worked as a curator and producer respectively: Zico Albaiquni’s solo exhibition Tilem. Disruptive Liminalities, 2022 and Eko Supriyanto’s dance performance IBUIBU BELU: Bodies of Borders (2020-ongoing). I will share how I approached these projects from a curator/producer perspective and the artistic collaborative process and how the works of these artists can be understood as decolonial aesthetics.

Dr. Sadiah Boonstra is a historian and curator with a broad cultural practice. Based in Jakarta, Indonesia, she is currently an independent curator and appointed Honorary Fellow at Melbourne University. Research-informed and audience-oriented, she combines her academic expertise with experience in curation, producing, and public engagement programs. From her 15 years of experience, she has worked with artists, governments, and cultural organizations in Indonesia, Australia, and the Netherlands. In 2020, she founded PT Culture Lab Consultancy as the foundation of her works. Through PT Culture Lab Consultancy, Sadiah offers the service of concept development, research, training, and talks on the legacies of cultural history, heritage, and the performing arts of colonial and contemporary Indonesia.

Ceria Berkarya

Ceria Berkarya will present a number of moving images and artwork from Veronika Kusumaryati “Silent History”, Lab Laba-Laba’s presentation of “Si Titik” produced by the Center of State Film Production (PPFN), Moelyono with WVI ADP Keerom and Roy Villevoyes “Amún Mbes’ Reenactment”. They challenge us to critically understand the power structure in West Papua on the narrative of nationality, racism, and history. Since the insistence of the Dutch to control the land under the auspices of the empire, the repression of the New Order, to the violence of the security forces against the voices of the people, have historically persecuted West Papua sovereignty. West Papuan’s lives are erased to cater to the needs of extractivist and patriarchal states.

Art is assigned to reclaim a chronicle of West Papua; the land and its people are the mainstay and foregrounding the presence that is rarely discussed in our public consciousness and conversation. Slowly but surely, one by one, this picture has to be made in order to revisit history, both challenge institutional racism and investigate the form of art-making and aesthetic presentation.

Riksa Afiaty is an art worker living and working in Yogyakarta. She seeks to contemplate decoloniality in artistic practice and curatorial framework. She has been involved in exhibition making and programming in Jakarta, Maastricht, Ljubljana, Brussels, and Gwangju. In 2020, she co-initiated a residency project MARANTAU, which adopts the dynamics of movement, in-exile, distance from familiarity, and adaptation to work patterns and culture in new places. Questions what it means, in the words of Edouard Glissant, to errant and de-root.

Us, not them: artistic antagonism against neo-colonial entanglements in Southeast Asian modern and contemporary art

Like the aphorism “charity starts at home,” arguably, so does rebellion. While much decolonial discourse is often centred on a debate between the outsider Euro-American colonising power against a localised Southeast Asian protagonist, what happens when we bring this dynamic closer to home? Theories of colonisation within Southeast Asia have been articulated not only as a forced, external aggressor but equally as “without soldiers,” “through grammar,” and compellingly described as occurring “internally.”

This paper canvasses artistic depictions between the 1950s – 1980s within Southeast Asia, that allude to an encroaching colonial apparatus from within rather than from the outside. By drawing upon existing ideas such as the Bandung Spirit, as an “audacity” for artists to produce their image, I attempt to complicate colonial legacies as solely external to the region. Through a comparative lens, if we shift the focus laterally, we see how artists engaged with critical regionalism as a form of negotiating colonial legacies with and against each other. Embedded within the etymological term “culture” is the action of tilling, revealing how all forms of culture can carry colonial dimensions, even from a position initially against such forces.

Vera Mey is a PhD candidate in History of Art & Archaeology at SOAS, University of London. A starting point in her research is the rhetorical question: what is Southeast Asian about ‘Southeast Asian art’? She investigates this through looking at ideas of critical regionalism within art of Southeast Asia during the Cold War eras. She explores visual materials and practices in Cambodia, Indonesia and Singapore, paying particular attention to intersections of racial plurality within regionalism. She was Assistant Director at AUT University’s ST PAUL St Gallery in Auckland and was a co-founder of the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore. Recent independent projects include co-curating Sunshower: Contemporary art from Southeast Asia 1980s to Now (2017) at the Mori Art Museum and National Art Centre Tokyo, the largest survey of Southeast Asian artists to date. Mey also co-founded the scholarly journal Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia (National University of Singapore Press).

On the political imagination and agency in Richard Wright’s photographs taken during the Bandung Conference

According to American author Richard Wright, the parade of Asian and African leaders attending the Bandung Conference (1955) in its interaction with the cheering people, was elucidating a production and subsequent circulation of images, embodying self-determination and solidarity. We sense Wright’s acute awareness of the power of the (photographic) image. Only some 40 photographs made by him during the conference are known and archived today. In this contribution we would like to rethink again photography’s agency beyond the mere visual, as also Wright’s own photographs are carriers of revolutionary promise by envisioning the end of colonial modernity. Wright’s awareness of this potentiality goes back to his early successes when he composed texts for photodocumentary books on black life in the USA. Travelling to the Gold Coast (now Ghana) in 1953, he witnessed Kwame Nkrumah’s campaign for independence from British rule, and he made hundreds of photographs. His travelogue Black Power: A Record of Reactions in a Land of Pathos. The book was never realized as a photodocumentary though because of political concerns of the publishers about its advocacy for pan-African independence.

I would propose to re-look at Richard Wright’s photographs made during his trip to Bandung in 1955, as engines for a time to come, contributing to forms of political imagination connecting African, Asian and African American futures.

Philippe Pirotte (°1972) is a professor of art history and cultural studies at Staedelschule Frankfurt, visiting lecturer at Gudskul Jakarta, and associate curator at Gropius-Bau Berlin. Recently he curated a survey exhibition of Indonesian performance artist Melati Suryodarmo for the Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht (2022), and, in collaboration with a group of curators and scholars, he is preparing the major group exhibition Bandung Spirits, for the Gropius Bau, Berlin (2023). In this context he convened the series of online roundtables The Color Curtain and the Promise of Bandung (2021), focusing on cultural and artistic developments in relation to the 1955 Asia-Africa Conference in Bandung, Indonesia. Earlier, he curated the group show, Arus Balik. From Below the Wind to Above the Wind and Back Again for the Center for Contemporary Art Singapore (2019), and he was a member of the curatorial team of the Jakarta Biennale in Indonesia in 2017.

Sedekah Benih – Urban Ecology and Community-based Art Activism

Sedekah Benih is a collaborative project between artist Vincent Rumahloine and environmental activist Mang Dian, which combines art, design, activism, science, music, technology and traditional ecological knowledge. ‘Sedekah’ is a term derived from the Arabic word sadakah, an act of voluntary giving by Muslims without limitations in time or amount. ‘Benih’ means seeds. Sedekah Benih aims to preserve traditional ecological knowledge, generate appreciation for tiis leungeun (an Indonesian term roughly translates as “green thumb”), and connect people through food. As the authors state: “by sharing traditional ecological knowledge and values using different media, many people can learn”. It is thus oriented for people’s exchange and creating awareness of the importance of local heritages to make the strong identity of the communities.

Sedekah Benih tries to find and document the traditional knowledge from generation to generation about ecology in society through art and media. This traditional knowledge can be learned, developed, and shared to solve the current climate change problem. Through developing this project in Bandung the duo discovered the influence of karinding, the musical instrument used as a medium of expression on various occasions, one of which is planting seeds. Sound waves are believed to provide communication with plants to stimulate them to open. The project will continue collecting traditional eco-knowledge from the people in Bandung and will expand to other places in the future. Now sedekah benih growing as knowledge sharing and a two-way learning platform between the community and public.

Mang Dian
Vincent Rumahloine

At the Point You Stand, That’s Where the Problem Is

From the earliest, we identify ourselves by looking at what is happening in front of the class: the teacher speaking, a friend presenting something, or even ourselves being punished near the blackboard, also to be stared at. Since then we have started a methodology to identify ourselves, with other people as a comparison. That’s when we began to understand the concept of alienation

When we stand on a flat landscape, we will be oriented to one or more objects/others to determine the position of our ‘self’ in the landscape. In the reliefs of Javanese temples, almost all of the landscape acts only as a backdrop. The relief frames are filled with colossal crowds, where humans positioned close to each other. We can always feel the staring contest in the storyline. The distance that stretches only occurs between humans and gods. This implies that ‘otherness’ only exists in the spiritual space.

The relationship between the communality of tropical society and the Western method that came later was: the question of who is looking at whom, not to mention the distance of gaze that is built. The new gaze of colonization that draw borders and alienates people makes tropical humans lose their place in modern industrialization. The tropical way of gazing loses its literacy, crippled, and pushed into the forests or in the recesses of the city which is sometimes avoided from the spotlight of the system. They have made a long journey since proto-history, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, the West, while enduring the gloom of traditions, which they barely understand because they are confined in space and time.

Tropical humans finally began to question the meaning of this mysterious landscape and gaze with oil paint on canvas. Isolating the touristic Mooi Indie ideas: showing sunburned bodies, wearing hats, lifting hoes or rifles; as the foreground. In the 21st century, as that alienation melts into the screens of social media applications, the mystery of distance and its gaze still lingers in the twilight zone. Maybe tropical humans have to travel back to those dense frames, where there is no alienation, only stares at each other from the midst of the crowd, to be able to read their position on today’s map.

Otty Widasari (Balikpapan, 1973) is an artist and one of the founders of Forum Lenteng, a collective in Jakarta focusing on art, media, and sociocultural studies. Her solo artistic practice is nourished by her engagement with media activism, journalistic experiences dealing with social and historical actualities, and a lifelong study and connoisseurship of film. A continuous drawing practice gathers all her activities into one place: her working diary. Her works deal with everyday struggles related to the material conditions of life, and how to strategize an alternative way in the massively mediated world and rethinking the established Grand Narrative. Her solo exhibition project that started from Ones Who Looked at the Presence (Ark Gallerie, Yogyakarta, 2015) to Ones Who Are Being Controlled (Dia.lo.gue, Jakarta, 2016), where both deal with the social gesture disrupted by the coming of media technology in Indonesia, concluded in PARTISAN (National Gallery of Indonesia, 2022) where Otty fuses her lifelong artistic exploration and activism in media performativity, citizen narrative, alternative education, and affective collaboration.

The colonial legacy of Mooi Indie and the captive mind in the environmental policy of Citarum Harum

Mooi Indië paintings represented the orientalist-colonial imagination of the picturesque Netherlands East Indies, with the obfuscation of the social realities on the ground and the silencing of the adverse effects of colonial capitalism. This article discusses the colonial legacy of Mooi Indië paintings on contemporary environmental policy in Indonesia, with a case study of the policy of the Citarum Harum Taskforce. This Taskforce was formed in 2018 and marked the national government’s attempt to rehabilitate the Citarum after it was declared one of the most polluted rivers in the world. It provides an analysis of several Mooi Indië paintings which depict the Citarum River and were created by European painters (such as Antoine Payen and Isaäc Groneman), before looking at the contemporary effects of the Citarum Harum’s beautification-oriented policy. The article also analyses some particular stereotypes of Netherlands East Indies natives as depicted in Mooi Indië paintings for comparison with the Taskforce’s policy implementation on the residents along the Citarum River. Ultimately, such a comparison demonstrates a form of colonial captivity at work today. The ideas of the Citarum Harum Taskforce demonstrate a captive mind, which continues to hide the socio-environmental problems which persist. This to the exploitation of the environment and people in the wake of the contemporary neoliberal system which dominates our worldview. The paper is already published in Wacana, Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia, Vol. 23 No. 1 (2022): 200-224.

Chabib Duta Hapsoro is a PhD student at the Department of Malay Studies, National University of Singapore. He received his MA from the Faculty of Art and Design, Bandung Institute of Technology (2014). He is a member of The Art Schools of Asia cohort organized by the Asia Art Archive (2021-2022). Chabib’s research interest usually deals with the social production and dissemination of art in Indonesia, deliberating the role of ideologies, elites, dominant class, markets and governments. Chabib published a book entitled Alam Terkembang Hilang Berganti (Comma Books, 2020), comprising his writings on art. He also co-edited a book series, Pusaka Seni Rupa II: Seni Patung Indonesia Modern, (Directorate General of Culture, Ministry of Education and Culture, Indonesia, 2020). His writings have been published by Tempo Magazine, Art Asia Pacific, Wacana Journal of Humanities of Indonesia, among others.

Aulia Yeru finishes his master’s degree from the Institute of Technology, Bandung, taking Fine Art as his major. Currently pursues his PhD on Art Practice in University of New South Wales, Aulia maintains his artistic practice by continuously experimenting with methods, which currently focuses on environmental issues. Aulia has exhibited his works around Jakarta, Bandung, and Jogjakarta. Stemming from Aulia’s interest in the production of a space, which can be put in: “humans build space and space build humans”, he challenges himself on grasping the spatial change by applying a structured method to each of the materials. Aulia entwines the artistic and scientific explorations within his practice, consistently repeating the routine to fixate the variables, offering an alternative to producing and distributing knowledge.

The Greenhouse and the Museum: Prospects for Ecologies of Conservation

As bounded environments for the propagation of plants across colony and metropole, the greenhouse was at the vanguard of colonial environmental and architectural discourses for much of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. This paper points to the continued salience of greenhouses in the articulation of philosophies and infrastructures of climatic discipline in Singapore. As a historical and postcolonial super-garden, respectively, Singapore Botanic Gardens and Gardens by the Bay provide case studies with which to investigate the creation of standardized micro-environments: from a history of the glasshouse and herbarium as sites for care-as-domestication, to present-day operations as exemplar of climatic techno-science and futurology. The conservation practices of the two gardens, we argue, provide salient intertexts to the present prospects of museum-based art conservation in the island-nation, whose penchant for international best practices is often at odds with cultural-climatic specificities of the tropics. This inquiry into the greenhouse and the museum as ecologies of conservation implicated in a global colonial history of climatic discipline offers a new entry point into contemporary debates around the collecting, care, and restitution of museological objects.

Chanon Kenji Praepipatmongkol is an Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art at McGill University. Previously, he was Curator at Singapore Art Museum and Visiting Lecturer at the National University of Singapore. He writes on modern and contemporary art, with emphasis on conditions of artistic production and reception for the global majority. Such conditions include the precedence of religious forces in modernity, chronic “illiberalism” and “underdevelopment,” and non-temperate climactic ecologies. His essay “David Medalla: Dreams of Sculpture” (2020) was awarded the Oxford Art Journal Prize for Early Career Researchers. He holds a Ph.D. in History of Art from the University of Michigan.

Selene Yap is Assistant Curator at the Singapore Art Museum. Prior to her appointment at the museum, she held research positions at the Future Cities Laboratory and Singapore University of Technology and Design. Yap was also programme manager for visual arts at The Substation, Singapore, where she provided research and curatorial support for exhibition projects that sought to defy conventional use of the arts space. As an independent curator, she has co-curated the projects opening day (2017-18), browsing copy (2019) and State of Motion 2020: Rushes of Time with the Asian Film Archive.

Parodi Partikelir

Since 2014, I have been working on projects related to the dark history of what happened in 1965/1966 through fiction. My interest in this history is prompted by my discovery of my grandfather’s diary, which took me to the tangled parts of these particular histories. These tangled histories ultimately reflect bigger socio-political dynamics in Indonesia in the twentieth century. The dark history of 1965 led many Indonesians to hate those accused of the communist rebellion and their families through doctrines. The end of the New Order regime opened the space for freedom of speech, revealing the gaps in history. This moment interrupted facts that emerged to “complement” what many have learned throughout their school years.

Parodi Partikelir is a project that acts as a doorway down memory lane through a notebook of someone I have never met, my grandfather. The journey toward collecting pieces of memory of 1965 introduced me to the Koblen prison in Surabaya – a historically emotional place for political prisoners who were taken away from their families without any trial. Zero Sum Game exhibition subsequently summarizes my diverse findings and shares different historical perspectives of a past event through a metaphorical folk tale in my work titled Hikayat Wanatentrem. Through this folk tale, I depict actual figures told in the archive as various animals who work tirelessly to survive and return to their habitats.

Fifty years of being numb is a long time for survivors and their families to suffer the misery caused by the crime against humanity and the 1965/66 genocide in Indonesia. One unresolved matter may not mean that it is forgotten. The human rights violations from 1965-1979 have gone through trials in the International People Tribunal in 2015 in Den Haag. Evidence from survivors, defendants, and witnesses had entered the hearings, resulting in several appeals that the government should have enforced. But after all these years, one might ask whether the trials only served as false hope.

Maharani Mancanagara is an Indonesian artist who lives and works in Bandung, Indonesia. Maharani was born in Padang, West Sumatra, Indonesia in 1990. Graduated from Institut Teknologi Bandung, Faculty of Art and Design, majoring in printmaking studio (2013). Primarily working in the mediums of printmaking, mixed media and drawing. She has participated in group exhibitions presenting emerging Indonesian artists since the past couple of years. In 2013 she received the Soemardja Award #3 from Soemardja Gallery, and she was nominated for Indonesia Art Award 2013 and 2015. In 2014, she was nominated for Young Artist Award from Art Show Busan – South Korea. In 2015, she was nominated for Bandung Contemporary Art Award #4. Her works explores Indonesia’s history, ancient time to present, based on her personal and family experiences. Taking her personal background, Maharani grew her interest upon visualizing the long history of education in Indonesia–a part of history left on artifacts from her late grandfather’s possessions. Based on the aforementioned perspective, Maharani then aimed to express these belongings to a work of art, a path she took in identifying herself which she hopes could provide recognition for a larger sphere of people with similar background.

Distances Declared: Exhibiting Engagements with the Colonial

Declaring Distance is an ongoing project on presenting archive-looking practices in an exhibition setting. The project grew out of the institutional residency program Atelier KITLV in 2022 to include communities of artists, writers, and researchers of Bandung, Indonesia who have been working with colonial archives that are increasingly becoming more accessible through digitization. Such practices have created organic, bottom-up exchanges of interpretations over the past and history.

The first iteration of the project was enacted in an exhibition setting with various extensions of public programs between April – May 2022 in Bandung. It involved local visual artists, filmmakers, musicians, journalists, writers, and academics. The presentation’s format and content are developed through a series of nonlinear encounters through networks of friendship, which in turn invites participants to be bodily present, contribute, and interact. The accumulated aggregate of materials provides points of engagement to close in on narratives previously defamiliarised. This resists the structural repression of information and imagination experienced by most within postcolonial Indonesia’s politicized education. It is an effort to collectively declare distances of what structures the local subject, by artistic initiation.

To watch the project see https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XvcSyRUaU1SJ4Dt0bXD2Z4e24esdYRDr/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=106983679829585431386&rtpof=true&sd=true

Theo Frids Marulitua Hutabarat is an artist and lecturer at the Integrated Arts program, Universitas Katolik Parahyangan. He is a fellow of the Atelier KITLV annual residency program 2022 and has previously exhibited part of group exhibitions in Bandung, Bangkok, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Seoul, Singapore, Turin, and Yogyakarta.

Yacobus Ari Respati is a curator and lecturer at the Integrated Arts program, Universitas Katolik Parahyangan. He was trained in the visual art, with his works mostly on curating, curators, and having an interest in the exhibition histories of Indonesia. Some of his recent projects are Declaring Distance (2022), part of Atelier KITLV, Akal Tak Sekali Datang, Runding Tak Sekali Tiba (2019), Indonesian pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia, and Seteleng to Biennale: Exhibition Histories of 20th Century Indonesia (2017), part of the exhibition Art Turns World Turns.

Looking Back to Zero Point: Interpreting Archives from the Early Period of the "West Laboratory"

Generally, people talk about Bandung Fine Arts (ITB Fine Arts) in the field of modern Indonesian art by starting with Trisno Sumardjo’s critical writing entitled Bandung Serving the Western Laboratory in 1954. So from there, people also get a stereotypical term about ITB Fine Arts, namely Western Laboratory. One person responded to the criticism, Sudjoko, one of the students who later became a lecturer there. He did not entirely reject Sumardjo’s criticism; according to him, it is true that Bandung Fine Arts is a kind of laboratory. The reason is that experiments, investigations, analyses, and discussions about art are carried out there.

As a reference, Sumardjo’s critical writing is something that was written in 1954, seven years after Bandung Fine Art was founded. Therefore, this article cannot adequately describe what is happening in Bandung Fine Arts. To find out the actual situation and what Sudjoko called “a kind of laboratory,” it is necessary to read the early archives of Bandung Fine Art. These archives will be closely related to the existence of the Dutch lecturers, as well as the way they saw the phenomenon of art that existed at that time in the Dutch East Indies. Reading over these archives is also helpful in understanding an important aspect of Bandung Fine Arts; the school was intended to educate art teachers at the beginning of its establishment. Therefore, painting, the target of Sumardjo’s criticism, is only one of the subjects taught in Bandung Fine Arts.

Danuh Tyas Pradipta (b. Bandung March 11, 1987) completed his undergraduate education at the ITB painting studio. Then he completed his master’s education at ITB by taking the path of history and art theory. His master’s thesis is entitled Study of the Art Boom in the Indonesian Contemporary Art World. Since 2014 he has served as a researcher and curator at the Galeri Soemardja. In 2018, he was appointed as a permanent lecturer at the ITB Visual Art Study Program and joined the Aesthetics & the Sciences of Art Research Group.

Opening Contemporary Art to the Public in Singapore: Performativity in Tang Da Wu and Koh Nguang How’s Practice from 1979 to Now.

Abstract:

This paper examines the genealogy of publicness and making art in the public spaces of Singapore through a study of Tang Da Wu and Koh Nguang How’s artistic practice. Both Koh and Tang utilise a wide range of media in their contemporary art practices, specific to this paper I am focusing on the performative aspect of their work. In focusing on the artistic practices of two artists and their overlapping relations with The Artists’ Village, an analysis of four art events that took place on a farm, at the National Museum Art Gallery, in the National Archives Singapore, and on the streets of Singapore will be undertaken. In so doing, I argue for their roles as public interlocutors through performative, communicative, and collaborative work that created a new public for art in Singapore. I demonstrate that these projects and events share a number of things in common in opening contemporary art to the public. (1) the artists and the participants act as citizens in asserting their right to the city; (2) they organise discursive and critical works in state-approved events and festivals; (3) they mobilize their bodies in communicative action; and (4) they strove for publicness and visibility in their approach. I argue that these qualities combined constitute publicness. The two Singaporean artists have not only contributed to a larger movement striving for freedom of expression, but in each art event’s publicness, they have also mobilised critical forces in motivating the future development of contemporary artistic practice in this region.

Adrian Tan is a Ph.D. student at Nanyang Technological University School of Art, Design and Media (ADM). His research focuses on artists and their social role in the Southeast Asian city of Singapore as read through a study of urban and art historical studies. The ‘city-state’ is investigated as a ‘stage’ for artists’ activation of public space through performativity, participation, and collaboration. As a result of fieldwork into artistic interventions and projects produced in ‘the everyday’ or in public spaces, the significance of these peripheral events is examined as an important cultural production of its time and place.

Vanishing Point of Medium Photography in the Contemporary Art through Abstraction and Experimentation

Photography obtains a very dominant exposure in the arena of contemporary art. The artist pushed through the exploration of medium photography in the modern era by experimenting that tends to avoid conventional photography practices and give new aesthetic views on producing photography artworks. Those experiments are influenced by the theorists and visual edifices in the fine art tradition, especially painting. One such endeavor is abstracting and using idioms and symbols in the pictorial configuration. The use of photography challenges the artist to create new visual possibilities by experimenting to the extent that it is still at the vanishing point of the medium. This research offers a process of creating a photographic artwork by observing the representational strategy approach through medium experimentation, which is still in accordance with the basic principles of photography. The representation strategy of the artist using photography is associated with a trend that is a response to the development of technology and art practices globally. It can indicate a habitus shift in the approach, position, and social relation of photography media as a product of the industrial era and the technology development in the digital age. By conducting a qualitative approach and interdisciplinary methods, this research offers a theoretical foundation that is built through the process of art practice methods, visual culture studies, production technology, and the social relations of artists in the contemporary art world.

Deden Hendan Durahman is an artist, designer, and photographer. He received his Diploma and Meisterschüler in Fine Arts program at Braunschweig University of Art, Germany, before returning to Indonesia in 2006 to teach as a lecturer at FSRD ITB. His artworks are in the collections of various public institutions, such as the Tama Art Museum in Tokyo and the Cabinet des Estampes of the Art Museum in Geneva. His works have been included in several exhibitions in various countries, namely Indonesia, Germany, the United States of America, South Korea, Ireland, Belgium, China, Switzerland, Japan, Malaysia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Singapore, Thailand, and the Philippines. His works are also featured in the books, “Half a century of Indonesian printmaking”, “Photography in Southeast Asia: A Survey” by Zhuang Wubin, and “Identity Crisis: Reflections on Public & Private Life in Contemporary Javanese Photography”, “A History of Indonesian Photography” by Brian Arnold. He was awarded the Silver Prize at the Polaroid Transfer Photography Competition in 2004 in Hannover, recipient of the Juror Candidate Award at the Tama Tokyo Print Triennale in 2005 in Japan, and was selected for The Sovereign Art Asian 2020 award.

Recontextualization of Gestural Painting as a Reflection on the Phenomenon of Digital Disruption

Today’s civilization is marked by the disruption created by the application of digital technology in almost all areas of human life. Disruption produces new systems, arrangements and landscapes that have an impact on behavior, production-consumption systems, interpersonal relationships, to aesthetic desires and tastes. This phenomenon is predicted to grow rapidly, supported by the development of science, nanotechnology and genetic engineering. The collaboration of these three fields of science will further demonstrate the dominance of technology in the activities of human life. The role of the body is increasingly reduced by the power of technology and can even be replaced. Disruption of technology in the end gave birth to a tendency to dehumanize. This phenomenon has attracted the attention of the author to be studied and reflected in the visual form of the painting. Through artistic research methods in the form of visual experimentation accompanied by literature review, it was found that; Gestural painting approach can be an alternative answer to anxiety about the relationship between the body and technology. The aesthetic concept of gestural painting can accommodate the closeness of the body to the material and the role of the body in the creative process in addition to the totality of personal expression. In addition, the visual form of painting is strived to reflect digital visual images using conventional media. The meeting between gestural characters and digital mechanical images is one of the visual forms of painting that can be a reflection of the disruption phenomenon that the author understands today.

Oco Santoso is an artist and lecturer currently teaching in the Painting Studio at FSRD ITB. He has been actively participating in national and international exhibitions, including “Traditionelle und ZeitgenosslscheKunstaus Java” in Potsdam in 2001, 2007 AIAE in Bandung, 2010 “Contemporary Islamic Art” at Lawangwangi Creative Space in Bandung, 2021 AIAE in Kyushu, Japan, and many others. He is currently pursuing his doctoral degree at FSRD ITB.

Power Through Language: Hybridisation of Vietnamese Text-Based Art

Languages are powerful and dynamic forces facilitating communication, imparting meaning, and constructing identities. Text-based art manifests language by translating thoughts and oral expression into words and marking visual artistic practice with linear inscriptions. The linguistic framework provides the artists with an authentic alternative to a figurative mode of representation, enabling language to transcend its idiosyncrasies to become a methodology.

Vietnamese text-based art is a narrative of resistance, a conceptual and aesthetic strategy involving semiotic cues adopted to address the new realities of the region. Vietnamese artists become interlocuters, negotiating the artwork’s text and subtext through identity and situating the history of the Vietnamese language in the contemporary.

I argue that Vietnamese text-based art is a post-colonial product of linguistic hybridity. Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin defines linguistic hybridity as an amalgamation of two or more languages in a particular place, time, or utterance. Coloniality is an ambivalent presence, distinguishing its authoritativeness from its difference by producing hybridity. Vietnamese artists Bui Cong Khanh (b.1972) and Thao Nguyen Phan (b.1987) whose text-based art discuss narratives of the nation and identity in a post-colonial society, establish inherent connections between art and linguistic expression. They transform the visual discourse by navigating conceptual and aesthetic textual methodology, anchoring text-based art in colonial and post-colonial Vietnamese history.

Akshatha Rangarajan is a sculptor who graduated with an MFA from Illinois State University, USA, in 2010. She pursued a MA in Asian Art Histories from LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore in 2022 to learn about contemporary Southeast Asian art. Her fasciation with linguistics motivated her research into Asian text-based art during her MA. Her MA thesis analysed the socio-political context of Indonesian text-based art by artists FX Harsono (b.1948) and Jompet Kuswidananto (b.1976).

Time to Care: Aesthetics of Everyday Life in Twentieth-Century Indonesia

Abstract:
This paper is a preliminary study of the visual history of everyday care in twentieth-century Indonesia. It specifically examines illustrations in domestic manuals and magazines for women and children from the 1900s to the 1960s. These often-anonymous illustrations appear in the forms of drawings and photographs depicting images of cooking, sewing, cleaning, interior arranging, child-rearing, and maintaining relationships. This paper engages with Yuriko Saito’s exegesis of “everyday aesthetics” (2008) and “aesthetics of the familiar” (2018) to explore the visuality and textuality of everyday life that are grounded in interactions between material objects and bodily movements of doing housework and care work. The portrayals of household members, the mappings of houses’ interior and exterior, and the sequential and non-sequential scenes of domestic activities are artistic objects that render the spatial dimension of the domestic home and the temporality of care as both practice of living and feminized labor. I argue that these artistic renditions of space and time to care during the late colonial period, the Japanese occupation, and independent Indonesia shared a similar feature: they were critical signifiers that helped to constitute and circulate norms about when and how one, especially women, ought to feel as they perform care. In this sense, the physicality and technicality of care in twentieth-century Indonesia were inseparable from its aesthetic qualities and affective prescriptions. Finally, I contend that focusing on the history of everyday aesthetics helps intellectual and art historians to converse about gender and everydayness in writing histories of visual art and aesthetic practice in Indonesia.

Eunike “Nik” Setiadarma is a Ph.D. candidate in History at Northwestern University, specializing in modern Indonesian/Southeast Asian history with a minor in global intellectual history. Nik’s dissertation project, The Craft of Care, examines the historical emergence of care ideas in twentieth-century Indonesia by looking into the discursive, visual, and material culture of popular magazines, domestic manuals, cookbooks, and self-help books. Nik previously received B.Sc. in International Relations from Universitas Katolik Parahyangan, Bandung, and M.Sc. in International Development from the University of Manchester, UK.

Center, in-between, periphery, and so on: Ideas in ‘Rhizomatic Archipelago’ and how it played out

Since December 2018, Cemeti—Institute for Arts and Society has been working on the ‘Rhizomatic Archipelago’ program. As mentioned on the institute’s website, this program aims to be a platform to develop an art and cultural work that emphasizes the importance of decentralization and equal distribution of knowledge and experience. Cemeti’s means of implementing its aim, among others, are by having 13 artists—mainly from outside Java— participating in the program and establishing networks in cities outside of Java—such as Palu, Polewali Mandar, and Aceh. My paper will focus on examining fundamental ideas of the program—among others, decentralization, center, in-between, periphery, and equality—. I particularly want to understand: what is the program’s logic in using the ideas; why does it use it? Moreover, as the program’s name is ‘Rhizomatic Archipelago,’ I want to understand whether or not it links to Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of rhizome. If it links, how does the program localize the concept? I also want to study how the ideas develop the program and how they contribute to the knowledge production within the program. As a methodology, this study will use interviews (with artists, Cemeti, and networking organizations and communities) and a close reading of the program’s written publications, activities, and artworks.

Sita Magfira recently received her MA in History in the Public Sphere under the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degrees program scholarship. She got her BAs in English Literature (Sanata Dharma University) and Philosophy (Gadjah Mada University). Before pursuing her MA, she worked in between art management, research, and curation, mainly in Yogyakarta. Her current research interests are transnationalism (particularly between Southeast Asia and East-Central Europe), decolonization, intellectual history, and cultural history. She is also a member of Lifepatch—a citizen initiative in arts, science, and technology.

Colonial Cartographies and Their (Critical) Alternatives: A Tactic for Reconciling Regionality and Contemporaneity

Due to geographic and geopolitical proximities, interest from Australia in contemporary Southeast Asian art has increased significantly since the late 1980s. Whilst this has evidently led to increased visibility across borders, there is also a clear impact of diplomacy and agendas of various nation-states that has influenced the writing of Australia-Southeast Asia art histories.

This is seen, for example, in the way that Southeast Asian art is characterised in galleries and textbooks as from ‘near neighbours’ and ‘friends’ of Australia, but simultaneously from an elusive ‘elsewhere’. This paradox of distance and perception has historical roots; in colonial preconceptions and North Atlantic art-historical influences, that have contributed – indirectly or otherwise – to placement of Australia at the centre of Australia-Southeast Asia art historiographies.

This presentation takes as a case study the contemporary curatorial narratives constructed in Australian art galleries about Yolngu (Northern Territory, Australia) and Makassar artists and their long history of exchange, and examines the impact of both colonial and decolonial legacies on reconceptualisations of this exchange. This is in the context of little involvement from Australia’s art world within the contemporary Makassar art scene, beyond Yolngu-Makassar exchanges.

It aims to ask: What might a ‘de-centred’ approach to (re)writing this art history look like? I argue that it is necessary to shift the centre of art-historical gravity from Australia back to Makassar, and to move beyond the singular ‘centre’ to showcase multiple layers of meaning and being. I argue that this methodological multiplicity lies in the conceptual zone of the South, and in models of South-South cultural conversations. I aim to demonstrate how an ‘un-mapped’ Southern perspective that prioritises relationality and dialogue can include Australian and other trans-regional voices too, but as part of a larger, polyvocal conversation.

Caitlin Hughes is a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Her research examines the global contexts of contemporary Indonesian art, and its ‘translation’ across geopolitical borders. She is interested in Southeast Asian art and Australian art history, and the intersections between these places and beyond to broader Asia-Pacific contexts. As well as this, her research projects to date have investigated the contexts of urban, environmental, cosmopolitan, and play-centred aesthetics in contemporary Asian art. Caitlin holds a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Art History and Curatorship (Honours, First Class) from the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia.

Formalist Criticism in Indonesia through the Critiques of Dan Suwaryono and Oei Sian Yok

Abstract:
This paper discusses the formalist approach in the practice of criticism in Indonesia through selected writings of Dan Suwaryono and Oei Sian Yok. This research will first explore the emergence of formalism ideas in Indonesia as a practice and principle that first emerged in European-American modern art in the early 20th century. Among many modern art discourses in Indonesia, formalism began to be practiced by artists from the School Bandung since its establishment in 1947, now known as Institut Teknologi Bandung. One of the most famous reactions to formalism was Trisno Sumardjo’s critique, ‘Bandung Serves the West Laboratory,’ who criticized the exhibition of Bandung artists at Balai Budaya in 1954. Sumardjo expressed dissatisfaction with the exhibition, which, to him, imitated the ‘West’ and did not suit the Indonesian environment. This criticism at the same time echoes recurring debates over the ‘West’ and ‘East’ ever since Polemik Kebudayaan in 1935. Sumardjo was also one of the early critics along with several artist-critic in the 1940s, such as S. Sudjojono, M. Balfas, and Basuki Resobowo. The main approach in these criticisms still revolves around identity and ‘Indonesianness.’ Using a critical discourse analysis framework, this research hypothesizes that there is a shift of direction from the national-ideological to pure formalist criticism, as Suwaryono and Oei Sian Yok implied since the 1950s. The two writers often conduct comparative critiques by comparing Indonesian and European-American artists to align both in a single orbit of artistry and thought. This research aim is to propose a formalism genealogy until it becomes an independent discourse in Indonesia.

Ibrahim Arimurti Rashad is a writer and art program manager. He graduated with a Fine Arts major at Institut Kesenian Jakarta in 2018. His thesis discussed the manifestos of Indonesian art movements from 1950–2000. Currently, he works as a visual art program manager at Salihara Arts Center. He is the writer of “Amrus Natalsya: Memahat Bahtera Purba dan Pecinan Kota Tua” as part of Pusaka Seni Rupa Indonesia 2: Seni Patung Indonesia Modern (Indonesian Ministry of Education and Culture, 2021). He is currently pursuing graduate study at Institut Teknologi Bandung, focusing his thesis on critic Dan Suwaryono

Picking apart food culture narratives

Abstract:
Food, whether intentionally or subconsciously, has its role in art and the people who make art. Be it soup cans or fruit bowls, food can portray, represent and convey meaning. This paper argues the contemporary portrayal and treatment of certain foods (of formerly colonised countries, particularly Southeast Asian nations) by former colonisers are reflections of an existing and perceived hierarchy ingrained in colonial legacies. This paper seeks to encourage art makers from Southeast Asia to take (back) control of the production of food culture narratives that have been fed to them through literature and semiotics in the arts and visual communication products by ex-colonial countries.
The proposed presentation is a derivative of ‘Microaggressions and the portrayal of “disgust” in food writing,’ which I presented at the Biennial Food Studies Conference at Umbra Institute, Perugia, Italy in June. This paper (to be presented as a work-in-progress) argues that formerly colonised countries bear an intrinsic intergenerational burden of feeling obliged to wait for the approval of Western colonisers, particularly when it comes to cultural culinary heritage or traditions that defy Western conventions, before they are confident or proud enough to (re)claim and (re)define those narratives as their own.
In 2018, the city of Malmo in Sweden opened a Disgusting Food Museum. Many foods are notably from Asian countries, including but not limited to Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, China, Taiwan, Japan and the Philippines; listing delicacies such as durian, fermented tofu, balut, century egg, kopi luwak and natto in their curation. To date, the exhibition has travelled to various cities in the US, France and Germany.
Based on Krishnendu Ray’s (NYU) “global hierarchy of cultural tastes” theory, empirical research methods were used to conduct qualitative media analysis of the portrayal of durian in food-related articles, published between 1 January 2018 to 1 January 2021 by in four mainstream Western news outlets (CNN, BBC, The Guardian and The New York Times). In Malaysia, cultural respect towards the fruit is reflected in mythological folklore by indigenous peoples like the Kayan of Borneo and the Orang Asli Semai tribe. The article, ‘A Pulp’s Fiction’—self-published in international food culture magazine, Plates, Vol.2: Durian (January, 2020)—argues that the vilification of a greater number of Asian foods in comparison to European cuisines is a reflection of a global racial bias.
One of the observations from the media analysis included the use of the “white saviour” lens when a Caucasian person interacted with the vilified durian (e.g. “discovering” the fruit)—a stark contrast to the treatment of the fruit when it was placed in an Asian context. This paper also hopes to further encourage the discussion of cultural appropriation and the semiotics of editorial food styling.

Dee May Tan is a journalist and cultural researcher. She is the founder and the editorial/creative director of Plate Magazine, an independent international print magazine aspiring to use food as a medium for conversation to explore stories of human rights, intangible cultures, indigenous land, and the environment. She has been presenting her research internationally, including in Malaysia, Singapore, Italy, and others. She received her degrees in Communication and Multimedia Journalism from the University of Queensland, Australia, and the University of Westminster, United Kingdom. She is also granted several awards and residency programs, including recently at Can Serrat International Writers Residency 2020/2021 in Spain and Rimbun Dahan Artist Residency 2020-2021 in Malaysia.

Sip! Indonesian Art Today and Awas Recent Art from Indonesia Exhibition

Abstract:
The exhibition “Sip! Indonesian Art Today” focuses on the form of publication, which is ARNDT’s current focus on the Southeast Asian art scene and the Asian and Pacific art market. This exhibition produces an interesting form of publication because it is like a book and accompanies artist profiles and portfolios, including some important works for each artist, “Sip! Indonesian Art Today”, curated by Enin Supriyanto. This study conducted a comparative study, namely the Awas Recent Art from Indonesia, organized by Cemeti from Yogyakarta, who took the initiative to gather four curators to initiate this exhibition, namely M Dwi Marianto, Mella Jaarsma (Indonesia), Alexandra Kuss (Germany), and Damon Moon (Australia), as well as 14 Indonesian artists. This exhibition has a large agenda because it has been very successful in representing the artist’s point of view and anxiety about the condition of post-reform Indonesia. This exhibition is widely supported by foreign cultural institutions and is very good in the process of bureaucracy because it can tour four countries at once. The tendencies of the two exhibitions are very different. Although both exhibitions are held in foreign countries, the Sip exhibition is supported by an art dealer/single patron and has a focus on seeing the development of contemporary Indonesian art as a whole, which leads to its mutual influence with global market penetration. Meanwhile, at the AWAS Recent Art from Indonesia exhibition, there are many cultural exchange agendas because Indonesia is in the spotlight after the collapse of the Suharto regime.

Axel Ridzky is interested in archives, art history, and curatorial work. He held an internship as an assistant curator at Galeri Soemardja from 2014 to 2018 and has been working as an independent curator since 2018. As a curator, he worked in several group exhibitions, including at Galeri Soemardja, Lawangwangi Creative Space, Art Jakarta, Lir Space, and others. He also worked at Art Jakarta as a Public Programs Manager. He is currently finishing his graduate program in the Curatorial and Art Management study program. In addition, he assisted the Center for Indonesian Visual Art Studies (CIVAS) at FSRD ITB, while also working as a curatorial assistant at ArtSociates in Bandung, West Java.

Toward Provincialism: Rethinking Contemporary

Abstract:
Indonesian Art in 2010s.
In 1998, Indonesia began a new political constellation, which resulted in criticism of all forms of concentration. This had an impact on the visual arts, which began to shift away from abstract (non-political) works of art as a result of the New Order’s repression, as well as works of realism that were critical of the New Order, and toward works of art that sought to find visual languages that were appropriative to the development of western art by adapting existing localities as a challenge to the euro-America-centric global narrative. In this case, exhibitions in 2010, such as “Contemporaneity” in Indonesia and China, were followed by “Ethnicity Now”. In the next year, the Biennale Jogja appeared with the Equator Program, which is very close to South-South thinking, as a continuation of the Asian-African spirit (1955). Interestingly, the project then brought about an effort to present visual languages along with the realities and issues experienced by formerly colonized countries, with all the complexities of current conditions. There were also several other exhibitions, such as the Jakarta Biennale, ArtJog, and Bandung Contemporary Art Award (BaCAA), etc., which until now have found a tendency for artists to engage in art practices that celebrate local issues with various media, including new media. This paper aims to show the variety of events of the accompanying artworks, which bring the tendencies of thinking about locality, appropriation, decolonization, and feminism together as part of a provincialism thought that is based on Indonesia’s issues.

Adhi Pandoyo is an artist, historian, and independent researcher. He founded Nonton Senja (@nontonsenja) as a forum for research, art making, and film screening. In 2020, he established an art collective Broken Pitch (@brokenpitch), which focuses on artistic and performative works based on open collaboration and collaborative curatorial practices. He participated in several exhibitions, including in Biennale Jogja XVI in 2021 and “Daulat dan Ikhtiar” at the Vredeburg Fort Museum in Yogyakarta. He has been working actively on Buku Seni Rupa (@bukusenirupa). He is currently finishing his graduate program in art history and theory at FSRD ITB.

Post-tradition in the context of Indonesian contemporary art

Abstract:
Global contemporary art is a convergence of contemporary art practices from around the globe. Locality is regarded as an important identifier and distinguishing factor in global contemporary art. The legacy of tradition in modernity is one form of local identity. Currently, globalization, which is primarily controlled by capitalism, is eroding tradition’s legacy. Despite the fact that globalization provides opportunities for locales to gain global recognition, they are still governed by countries with significant capital powers. For this reason, it is essential to articulate the position of traditional heritage in Indonesia’s modernity.

Post-tradition is a term used to denote the relationship between tradition and modernity. Post- tradition does not have a fixed meaning, but among other things, it means looking back at tradition to be managed as part of local modernity. Indonesia is a multicultural country with a wealth of diverse traditions, which are sadly vanishing under the pressure of modernity. Contemporary art is considered important because it can provide an aesthetic experience, stimulate imagination, and provoke critical reflection. In this case, contemporary Indonesian artists can play their role in representing issues of traditional heritage in Indonesian modernity.

Currently, Western modernity, which is capitalistic and exploitative of natural resources, has proven to have a destructive impact. The current era of the earth is called the Anthropocene, which is an era that shows environmental damage due to modern human behavior. It is time to build an alternative to the capitalistic model of modernity, and it can be seen by looking back at traditional wisdom, which places humans as part of nature, not to conquer and exploit nature. Therefore, the voices of contemporary Indonesian artists in the post-tradition context are important.

Asmudjo Jono Irianto is an independent curator, artist, and lecturer at FSRD ITB. He is currently pursuing a doctorate degree at FSRD ITB. As an artist, he has participated in numerous exhibitions, including solo and group exhibitions in Indonesia and abroad. He has curated many exhibitions nationally and internationally as well since the 1990s.

Rethinking tradition in contemporary Southeast Asian art

Abstract:
In the late 1980s and more prolifically in the 1990s, ‘tradition’ was a central theme in exhibiting and curating contemporary Southeast Asian art. International exhibitions such as the first Artists Regional Exchange on ‘Traditions and Narratives’ (Perth, 1987), Tradition, the source of inspiration: from the First ASEAN Symposium on Aesthetics, Workshop and Exhibition (Tokyo, 1990), New Art from Southeast Asia (Tokyo, 1992), the first Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art on ‘Tradition and Change’ (Brisbane, 1993), and Contemporary Art in Asia: Traditions/Tensions (New York, 1997), looked closely at the role of tradition in defining what constitutes contemporary art in Asia. In these exhibitions, terms such as ‘change’, ‘tensions’, the ‘new’, and ‘hybridity’ were often paired with understandings of tradition to highlight the changing cultures within Southeast Asia in post-colonial and globalised contexts. These terms also served as counter-narratives to existing preconceptions of tradition in Southeast Asia internationally/outside of the region, which were primarily associated with the ancient (such as religious artefacts and sculptures) and the decorative (textiles, weaving, wayang, or shadow puppets, etc.).

It has been over three decades since these major international exhibitions in the ‘90s were staged and it is both timely and critical to the ongoing historicisation of ‘the contemporary’ to reflect on the current engagement with ‘tradition’ in contemporary Southeast Asian art practice. What were the motivations to invoke tradition within the practices and discourses of contemporary Southeast Asian art? To what extent are these concerns still relevant today? This paper aims to examine the changing concerns and motivations of tradition in contemporary Southeast Asian art making and exhibitions at present, focusing particularly on the works of Ho Tzu Nyen (Singapore), Zico Albaiquni (Indonesia), and Pannaphan Yodmanee (Thailand).

Bianca Winataputri is a Melbourne-based independent curator, writer and PhD candidate in Art History and Theory at Monash Art, Design and Architecture (MADA). She was recently Public Programs coordinator at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) and previously Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art at the National Gallery of Australia, where she was part of a curatorium for the major exhibition Contemporary Worlds: Indonesia. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Melbourne and completed her Honours year at the Australian National University where she received the Janet Wilkie Prize for Art History in 2017. Bianca’s research is focused on Southeast Asian contemporary art exhibitions and artistic practices.

Decolonizing Maneuvers: The Veneer of Religiosity in Singaporean Performance Art

Abstract:
In this paper, I maintain that religion had always been important for the making of modern and contemporary art inside and outside of Singapore. However, its relevance to art critics and historians across the world differed. I suggest that accusations of “Eurocentrism” was related to a misunderstanding of what the modern was. My paper asserts that modern art did not emerge through grafting a scion of Euro-American thought onto Asian rootstock. Rather the modern, in this paper understood as a process of renunciation in form and content rather than a reduction of religion or tradition, was the scion grafted on Asian and Euro-American rootstock. I will prove this by comparing two pairs of performances: Ray Langenbach’s Christ in America (1985-88) and S. Chandrasekaran’s Ritual I (1987) and Ritual II (1987); and Chandrasekaran’s The Bug (1996) and Lee Wen’s Journey of a Yellow Man no. 4 & no. 5 (1994-95).

Chloe Ho is a doctoral candidate in Art History at the University of Melbourne. Her interest is in twentieth and twenty-first-century Singapore art, specifically in relation to performance and installation art and art historiography. She investigates the place of performance in the transmission of art and the art historical in the Singapore context, looking at artistic works, social phenomena, and its relation to society. Her current research project attempts to account for the transmission of art critical and art historical knowledge in the Singapore context outside Western structures of knowledge with a special focus on the late 1980s to the present.

The Savoy Hotel Jazz Band at the 1955 Bandung Conference

Abstract:
A central aim of the 1955 Bandung Conference was to promote Afro-Asian economic and cultural cooperation and to oppose all forms of (neo)colonialism. The conference was held at the Merdeka Building, originally built for the Sociëteit Concordia as a dance hall, entertainment, and social gathering venue for upper-class European people, at one end of the Jalan Braga shopping district. The art deco Merdeka Building was near the finest hotels in the area such as the Savoy Homann Hotel. This hotel had long served as a site for the performance of Western style music including jazz since the late 1930s. In this paper, I discuss two musicians in the Savoy Hotel Jazz Band who entertained guests during the 1955 Bandung Conference: singer Theresa (Amanupunnjo) Zen and guitarist Eddy Karamoy. The pair played nightly sets together to entertain the international guests throughout the weeklong 1955 Bandung Conference. By detailing and contextualizing the lives of these two musicians, the outcomes of the conference, such as the subsequent non-aligned movement, usually thought of as part of “border thinking” (Mignolo and Tlostanova 2006) become resituated as more firmly related to the colonial matrix of power. While Sukarno also scheduled performances with local bamboo angklung groups, the various Western and non-Western music played for guests at this conference displays a more complex genealogy of artistic practices in Bandung. The inclusion of Indonesian jazz musicians as part of the 1955 Bandung Conference both reinforces and destabilizes colonial legacies regarding the cultural production of art in Indonesia.

Otto Stuparitz is a recent graduate of the UCLA Ethnomusicology program. I conducted field and archival research based in Bandung from 2018–2020 related to jazz in Indonesia and in particular related to music in Bandung. I hope my research will be of interest to this group even though I have just recently graduated.

Indonesian Industrial Design: The Contextualizations of the Imported Discipline

Abstract:
The industrial design discipline, which initially emerged in developed countries, was imported to Indonesia as a higher education program in 1972 under arts education in ITB. In spite of the fact that it was following the standards of the western model, in traversing through the archives, industrial design education in Indonesia shows a distinct characteristic which sets it apart from the developed country’s profile. There was evidence of a lot of industrial design academic activities that took cases of craft-based industry – not the big machinal factory – as the manufacturing industry was not yet ready to produce mass industrial goods. If the discipline was not contextualized in this way (integrated with craft), it could be assumed that there wouldn’t be any field of industrial design in Indonesia considering there was yet to be a need for industrial designers. While rooted in and being a part of art education, Indonesian design history – including industrial design – is still left unexplored, a far cry from its art history that has already started to be defined. Using a historical approach, this study seeks to reveal industrial design education in Indonesia as something that was not presented as it is now, and to eventually find if various factors such as industrial development, national agenda, and the thinking of the school itself are intertwined and influenced the shape of the program.

Azizah Syafira was born in Tangerang, September 5 1999. She graduated from Bandung Institute of Technology in 2021 with a bachelor’s degree in Industrial Design and continued studying Design in graduate school through the fast-track program. She has experience as a research assistant for various topics in the scope of design and community. After starting her master’s program, her interest was drawn to the field of design history rather than object designing. In her current research, she tries to reveal the contextualization of the industrial design discipline when it was first introduced to Indonesia.

Bridging the Gap: A Study Into the Separation of Art From Craft in Twentieth-Century Thailand

Abstract:
Discussions surrounding coloniality often cite the Enlightenment period (1685-1815) as the practiced idealism where it characterised and developed the belief of a vertical natural order. During this period, the Capitoline Museum, one of the oldest public museums, opened in 1734. Its collection of modern paintings and antiquities would go on to contribute to forming a specific political agenda and a superior cultural narrative for the Roman Empire. This would set off centuries worth of curatorial behaviour and singular thinking around the world where categorisation and separation of material based on said belief was the principle.

With the early curatorial established as a quality of colonialism, when it came to the development of art within colonial Southeast Asia in the late 1800s, Thailand, officially independent, reacted to the threat of inferiority by leveling the capital city with museums and exhibitions of culture and “modernity” through mirroring the West and their displays of material possessions. This was also an act of visual rewrite of Thailand’s identity, historicising heritage and owning culture to disenchant and gain control over its neighbouring countries. Suddenly, ownership of art and what is now known as craft is divided. Thus representing different projections of relevancy to the time.
In this paper, the author will identify key moments to the development of “Art” and the defining of “Craft” as a result of colonial collateral in 20th century Thailand to critically discuss their weight and role pertaining to modern expressions of cultural identity and history. The essay explores the influence of politics and religion, its impact on present day art ecology and the economics that followed.

Adulaya Hoontrakul graduated with a BA in History of Art and Archaeology with Music from SOAS London and an MA in Asian Art Histories from Goldsmith’s London in partnership with LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore. She is currently a PhD student at GEIDAI Tokyo.
Adulaya is an independent curator. She has curated numerous exhibitions, highlights include Vasan Sitthiket’s retrospective show “I Am You” (2018), Spectrosynthesis II (2019) and Damrong Wong-Uparaj’s posthumous “A Retrospective of Versatility and Discipline” (2021). Essay publications include Global Arts Journal Volume 3 (2022), True Reader in Blind Area (2021), and BACC Art Journal (2020).

Looking Back to Zero Point: Interpreting Archives from the Early Period of the ‘West Laboratory’

Generally, people talk about Bandung Fine Arts (ITB Fine Arts) in the field of modern Indonesian art by starting with Trisno Sumardjo’s critical writing entitled Bandung Serving the Western Laboratory in 1954. So from there, people also get a stereotypical term about ITB Fine Arts, namely Western Laboratory. One person responded to the criticism, Sudjoko, one of the students who later became a lecturer there. He did not entirely reject Sumardjo’s criticism; according to him, it is true that Bandung Fine Arts is a kind of laboratory. The reason is that experiments, investigations, analyses, and discussions about art are carried out there.

As a reference, Sumardjo’s critical writing is something that was written in 1954, seven years after Bandung Fine Art was founded. Therefore, this article cannot adequately describe what is happening in Bandung Fine Arts. To find out the actual situation and what Sudjoko called “a kind of laboratory,” it is necessary to read the early archives of Bandung Fine Art. These archives will be closely related to the existence of the Dutch lecturers, as well as the way they saw the phenomenon of art that existed at that time in the Dutch East Indies. Reading over these archives is also helpful in understanding an important aspect of Bandung Fine Arts; the school was intended to educate art teachers at the beginning of its

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