Jakarta Art Fever — The Heat of Jakarta’s Art Scene

Jakarta Art Fever — The Heat of Jakarta’s Art Scene

Jakarta, Indonesia, has emerged as a dark horse of the global art market. The passion this city devotes to art is both pure and shrewd. Go on an art journey to meet the people and places leading Jakarta’s art culture, as if hunting for hidden gems.

Words Hur Taewoo
Photos Lee Jinwook picnomad@naver.com
Photos Han Sungpil
In collaboration with ASEAN-Korea Centre aseankorea.org

Macan Art Museum
Museum Macan

Opened in 2017, Macan is Indonesia’s first international-scale museum of modern and contemporary art. It was founded by Haryanto Adikoesoemo, one of the country’s leading art collectors and businessmen, and its space was designed by MET Studio, an experimental architecture firm based in London. It is located in Kebon Jeruk, West Jakarta, a bit removed from downtown Jakarta.

From the moment it opened, Macan drew high expectations and plenty of spotlight. People were also curious how much influence a contemporary art museum run by a nonprofit foundation could have in Indonesia. From the start, under director Aaron Seeto, it went beyond being a white cube that simply shows its collection, running a diverse range of programs at once, including lectures, events, artist support, and cultural projects. Special exhibitions by masters such as Yayoi Kusama, Lee Mingwei, and Xu Bing reportedly drew large crowds to the museum. Its educational programs have also encouraged sustainable growth together with the local community. Thanks to these efforts, Macan earned a place on “Time” magazine’s 2018 list of the ‘World’s 100 Greatest Places.’ In just three years, it had firmly announced its presence to the art worlds of Indonesia and beyond. This year, too, Macan continues its energetic pace, starting with an exhibition by Julian Rosefeldt.

“To establish a museum worthy of international standards, we had to overcome many obstacles. Indonesia still lacked infrastructure, and even finding a place where a museum could be built was not easy. Besides exhibitions, we focused on educational programs and set out to be a public space and an institution that leads cultural exchange.

The museum’s collection is based on more than 800 works of contemporary art from around the world that Adikoesoemo has collected over 30 years. Fifty percent of the collection is by Indonesian artists, and about 25 percent is by East Asian artists. Among them are works by Korean artists such as Paik Nam June, Park Seo-bo, Lee Ufan, and Do Ho Suh.

Given Indonesia’s demographics, about 80 percent of museum visitors are 40 or younger. This is what sets Macan apart from other museums, and it is a very interesting challenge for us. Most of the world’s famous museums mainly draw relatively older audiences and are run accordingly.

Without Macan, Indonesians might not have been able to see large-scale contemporary art exhibitions at all. In 2019, about 350,000 people visited our museum. For Yayoi Kusama’s exhibition in particular, more than 6,000 people came every weekend. This year’s first major exhibition, by Julian Rosefeldt, is also meaningful. It is the first large-scale video art exhibition in Indonesia.”

- Director Aaron Seeto

Art Jakarta
Art Jakarta

Art Jakarta is an art fair that showcases Indonesia’s strength. Amid the flood of art fairs around the world, it is no easy task for a fair in Southeast Asia to build a solid footing. Launched in 2009 as Bazaar Art Jakarta, it was long regarded as an ordinary art fair, but it has recently risen rapidly in the art world by transforming itself to play to Indonesia’s own strengths. The result of boldly focusing only on the Asian art world, this change was led by Tom Tandio. A well-known collector who passionately supports young Indonesian artists and the founder of the nonprofit art organization IndoArtNow Foundation, he was already a prominent figure in Indonesia’s art world. Since 2017, he has served as director of Art Jakarta, injecting new energy into the Indonesian art market.

“Art Jakarta marks its 12th edition in 2020. We originally held the event in a hotel ballroom, but from 2019 we moved to the Jakarta Convention Center and expanded the scale. Seventy galleries from 14 countries took part, including 30 Indonesian galleries and 40 Asian galleries, among them Korean ones, and about 39,000 visitors came.

This year’s Art Jakarta will run for three days in the last week of August. August is when Indonesians return to daily life after their summer vacations, so interest in domestic events is relatively high. The response has been so good that 60 of the galleries that took part last year are returning this year. Our major partners and sponsors are also very satisfied.

Art Jakarta is an Asia-centered art fair. In other words, only major Asia-based galleries can participate. That gives Art Jakarta an atmosphere different from other international art fairs. The government is also actively supportive. BEKRAF, the Indonesian Creative Economy Agency, sets up a booth to hold exhibitions of young artists.

This year, visitors can see Art Jakarta together with ARTJOG, the international art festival held in Yogyakarta. I recommend a trip that enjoys ARTJOG for a couple of days, then continues to Jakarta to visit Art Jakarta.”

- Director Tom Tandio

Collector Wiyu Wahono
Dr. Wiyu Wahono

Wiyu Wahono’s art collection delivers shock and surprise. Reflecting his firm convictions and views, it boldly expresses the zeitgeist of the post-globalization era and is unconcerned with commercial value. He calls himself a “Third Culture Kid.” He was born into a family that fled postwar China and went into exile in Indonesia, and he earned a doctorate in engineering in Berlin, Germany. After that, he was accustomed to a life without nationality until he returned to settle in Indonesia after 20 years. Life experience has no small influence on the direction of his collection. Wiyu began collecting art in 2000, embraces a wide range of media works, and is now recognized as a world-class art collector. His office, in a building covered with graffiti by Indonesian star artist Eko Nugroho, is also a private gallery displaying his own collection.

Q What was your first acquisition?

A The first was a work by an Indonesian artist that I bought in 2000. In the early days I mainly collected paintings and sculpture. Recently I have been collecting many works that prove contemporaneity, such as those by Ryoji Ikeda, Narpati Awangga, and Eduardo Kac.

Q What makes a good collector?

A When I buy a work, I don’t worry about ‘How much money could I make if I sell this later?’ or ‘How famous will this artist become?’ Just because a work’s price has multiplied doesn’t mean I can call myself a successful collector. A work bought for $5,000 could become $15,000, or it could drop to $500 tomorrow. You shouldn’t judge a collector’s caliber by the price of the works.

Q Do you often attend exhibition openings?

A I don’t go to openings. Everything is so expensive then! (laughs) And I prefer private collections to art fairs or commercial galleries. A collection speaks for its collector. When you look at someone’s collection, you start to wonder.
‘Why did they collect this?’ ‘What is the collector thinking?’
‘What kind of person is he?’

Q Where would you recommend going to experience contemporary art?

A Lately, I’ve come to enjoy seeking out art in faraway places, like Prada Marfa in Texas. Getting there takes forever. First you fly to Los Angeles, then drive eight hours to El Paso, on roads where you don’t see a single car. And from El Paso, you have to drive two more hours along a desolate road. The moment you come face to face with the work, in the middle of a deserted desert, you think, ‘Why on earth is this piece here?!’

- Collector Wiyu Wahono

ROH Projects
ROH Projects

ROH Projects is one of the most active galleries and project groups in Indonesia today. It was founded in 2012 by Laksamana Junior Tirtadji, then in his mid-twenties. ‘ROH’ means ‘spirit’ in Indonesian, a name chosen to capture the spirit of contemporary art. Focusing mainly on discovering emerging artists, it collects and supports experimental Indonesian contemporary art, including installation, sculpture and multimedia work. Through major art fairs such as Art Basel Hong Kong, the young artists from Indonesia and Southwest Asia whom ROH Projects has introduced are steadily gaining recognition on the international stage. This year, the gallery plans to move and reopen in a new location.

“In the early 2000s, there was hardly a culture in Indonesia you could call contemporary art. Jakarta, moreover, lagged behind Yogyakarta and Bandung, where art schools were established early on. Despite our cultural diversity, we lacked infrastructure. I think Jakarta’s art scene is only now waking up. Large-scale exhibitions at places like Museum MACAN are a good example.

Indonesia has a population of 260 million and a complicated history. We were a colony of the Netherlands and of Japan, and we went through periods of political turmoil, so many layers of culture run through the country. The diversity Indonesia holds is a tremendous strength, and I believe opportunities for growth can be found within it. That may be why Indonesian art has recently drawn attention around the world. documenta in Kassel appointed the Indonesian artist collective Ruangrupa as its artistic director. I’m very curious to see how the energy of Indonesian art, which goes beyond individuality, will come across at documenta.

I believe in the power of collaboration. We run various projects with galleries around the world, including collaborations with galleries in the Philippines, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan. We want to work with artists who have an international language. In other words, artists who represent not just Indonesia but anywhere. We also want to introduce and recommend artists who don’t follow trends and go their own way, artists who show their own work beyond the age of globalization and information overload, artists who never settle in one place and keep transforming.”

- Director Laksamana Junior Tirtadji