Contemporary Worlds: – Artists

Exhibiting artists: Zico Albaiquni Akiq AW Febie Babyrose Faisal Habibi Herbert Hans Duto Hardono FX Harsono Ruddy Hatumena Mella Jaarsma Adi ‘Uma Gumma’ Kusuma Jompet Kuswidananto MES 56 I Gusti Ayu Kadek (IGAK) Murniasih Eko Nugroho Garin Nugroho Octora Yudha ‘Fehung’ Kusuma Putera Tita Salina Tisna Sanjaya Handiwirman Saputra Uji ‘Hahan’ Handoko Eko Saputro Albert Yonathan Setyawan Melati Suryodarmo Agus Suwage Julian Abraham ‘Togar’ Tromarama I Made Wiguna Valasara Entang Wiharso

Contributing artists: 69 Performance Club/Forum Lenteng Nindityo Adipurnomo Reza Afisina Heri Dono Arahmaiani Feisal Syaiful Garibaldi House of Natural Fiber (HONF) Theo Frids Hutabarat Cinanti Astria Johansjah Paul Kadarisman Agung Kurniawan Bagus Pandega Wedhar Riyadi Ruang Rupa Citra Sasmita Arin Dwihartanto Sunaryo Yaya Sung Eddy Susanto Titarubi Wayan Upadana Syagini Ratna Wulan Tintin Wulia

For media - Profiles of artists attending exhibition launch in alphabetical order

ALBERT YONATHAN SETYAWAN born 1983 , West Java, Indonesia | lives and works Kyoto, Japan

Albert Yonathan Setyawan’s monumental ceramic floor installation Shelters 2018–19 comprises 1800 terracotta components meticulously arranged in a 5.5-metre square grid. Each individual form is painstakingly slipcast from a handcrafted plaster mould in one of five architectural shapes. Despite the humble nature of their material, the structures are elegantly proportioned and restrained in their simplicity. Arranged in a regular repeating pattern, their precise silhouettes create a variegated ‘skyline’ with rhythms of form and space. The configuration references the Diamond World or Kongokai mandala, a fundamental tool in Japanese esoteric Buddhist practice, which functions as an aid to meditation and a portal or medium for spiritual awareness and understanding. Instead of the five Wisdom Buddhas that comprise the individual components of the Diamond World mandala, Setyawan’s five architectural forms each reference the upper part of a religious structure: mosque, church, temple, stupa and ziggurat.In Shelters the artist invites the viewer to conceptually enter the three-dimensional ceramic mandala and consider the various spiritual practices and beliefs embodied in its architectural components. They recall the mixture of diverse faiths, cultures and ethnicities that surrounded Setyawan growing up in Indonesia and the occasional conflicts he witnessed that resulted from the collision of religion and politics. The artist considers the:... artmaking process a way to meditate and contemplate on certain issues. In this work, it is about trying to find balance and harmony in life. The work will be composed of shapes that willremind people of ... temples and shrines associated with their religious practices and faiths. All the miniatures of religious architecture sit next to each other, composed in a pattern that represents order, like the landscape of a city composed of many different houses and buildings.1 Setyawan primarily works with ceramics, a medium he prefers for its ubiquitous presence in daily life and social, cultural and historical associations. The repetition inherent in each installation allows him to become immersed in ‘art labour’, in which the process of production rather than invention is paramount. This induces a meditative state, described by the artist as a ‘mantra for daily life’. The repeated patterns in this installation recall not only mantras or chants recited to gain spiritual awareness, but also the sequences inherent in nature. More than arrangements of decorative elements, Setyawan’s ‘exalted aggregations’ instill a meditative focus in the viewer and call on our interpretation of, and desire to map, the order of the universe. Carol Cains

DUTO HARDONO born 1985 Jakarta, West Java, Indonesia | lives and works Bandung, West Java, Indonesia

An experimental musician and sound artist, Duto Hardono investigates the possibilities of how sound is presented within a gallery context, often performing his works with found objects and analogue technology. Variation & improvisation for ‘In harmonia progressio’ 2016–17 is an instructional vocal game piece where the artist invites groups of people to transform the ‘white cube’ of museums and galleries into a space for radical audio interruptions. The instructions are simple yet infinitely complex in their different interpretations and iterations. Hardono engages 12– 15 vocal ‘actors’ to interpret aurally and to express physically the words ‘in, harmonia, progressio’. These words are repeated, much like a tape loop, to form a unique vocal composition. Like a game of Chinese whispers, the original instructions are interpreted and then broken down to form unexpected new meanings. While this morphing of sound into new forms is nothing new in the world of sound art, the agency that is handed over to interpretation by different communities of people, with different cultural backgrounds, is what differentiates the work. Every time it is interpreted and performed it essentially becomes a new vocal score. In recent years, sonic works in galleries and museums have been gaining more attention through the current focus on live art practices and the unearthing of the historical connections between visual art and sound. However, while this connection is acknowledged, it is still surprising to find durational live works in museum spaces, whose purpose is generally to preserve and display art, not always to activate it. Presenting live performance works in sanctioned spaces, then, can be seen as a radical departure from the white cube’s intention. In Indonesian contemporary art practice, art can happen anywhere — on the side of a road, in share houses, in nature, in cafes and restaurants—with minimal emphasis on the ‘where’ and maximum attention on the ‘what’. The most important aspect of art making is that you share your work with your community, seek support and invite people to engage. This democratisation of art is what Indonesian contemporary art practice does best and is an important approach to bring to international art discourse. Kristi Monfries

EKO NUGROHO born 1977 , Central Java, Indonesia | lives and works Yogyakarta, Central Java, Indonesia

Belonging to a younger generation of artists who emerged post-Reformasi—known as generation 2000 or the internet generation—Eko Nugroho witnessed the rapid social and political changes that followed the fall of Suharto’s 32-year rule. Working primarily with popular culture imagery—street art, comic books and science fiction—seamlessly woven together with traditional Javanese motifs from batik and wayang (shadow puppets), Nugroho has developed hybrid pop-figures that embody the attitude of this period. These figures appear prominently in his underground comic zine, Daging Tumbuh (DGTMB) (see p 136), which was initiated in 2000 in collaboration with other artists in the spirit of the newly won democracy. More recently, these figures have found new surfaces as the artist playfully experiments with different media—sculpture, embroidery, mural painting, contemporary wayang kulit performance and installation. Nugroho’s multidisciplinary practice has grown from a central objective: to find public space, in any shape or form, to share his art. Combining sculpture, installation and batik, Carnival trap 2018 features brightly coloured costumes concealing all but the faces and feet of the figures beneath. Made of upcycled plastic debris collected in Yogyakarta, the work addresses Nugroho’s concerns regarding Indonesia’s plastic predicament that affects the entire archipelago. This not only situates the artist in a local conversation but is a comment on the wider global issues of waste management and land pollution. Conceptually, this work likens Indonesia’s current political situation to a carnival, charged with colourful lights, roaring noise and a seemingly collective euphoria. However, Nugroho’s work is a cautionary message on the hype often created by politicians, inviting us to be critical and to look beyond this misleading masked festivity. The artist’s distinctive embroidery works also connect to greater socio-political issues pertinent to everyday life in Indonesia. Throw away peace in the garden 2018 (see pp 8–9) and We keep it as hope, no more no less 2018 compare Indonesia’s democracy to a garden where politics, religion and culture are tangled like branches, vines and wildflowers. Embroidery holds a unique and important place in Nugroho’s oeuvre, and has led him to establish a business in support of Yogyakarta’s community of embroiderers. Nugroho’s practice is rooted in the realities of his local community but has an astute global outlook. Evident in his multifaceted practice, the artist presents an awareness of the complexities and dilemmas of contemporary life in an increasingly interconnected world. Bianca Winataputri

ENTANG WIHARSO born 1967 Tegal, Central Java, Indonesia | lives and works Yogyakarta, Central Java, Indonesia and Rhode Island, United States of America

Entang Wiharso is perhaps best known for his cut-out metal wall reliefs, which hark back to traditional narrative bas-relief panels that adorn ancient Hindu and Buddhist temples such as Borobudur in Central Java. In the Temple of Hope series, which Wiharso began in 2009, the artist developed his cut-out wall panels into large-scale monumental installations. Temple of Hope: Door to Nirvana 2018 is an intricate metal house-like structure with an entrance on each side aligning to the cardinal directions north, south, east and west. On the steel walls and roof of the temple are laser-cut texts and complex imagery referring to both historical and contemporary themes— Indonesian traditional and mythical figures alongside motifs drawn from popular culture, everyday life and socio-political issues. Temple of Hope: Door to Nirvana is the largest temple Wiharso has created to date and for the first time audiences will be able to enter the structure. Internally lit by an elaborate chandelier with organic artery-like branches, the light cast creates shadows of the text and images onto visitors and the surrounding walls. This dramatic visual effect is evocative of wayang kulit shadow puppet theatre—another major artistic tradition in Java. Wiharso’s work is largely self- referential and he positions his own personal narrative within the larger global context of social and historical narratives. Temple of Hope: Door to Nirvana is a meditation on the impact of intolerance towards difference in an ever-increasingly globalised world and how this threatens any possibility of a harmonious future. The texts cut into the steel roof of the temple speak the voices and views of Wiharso and his friends, family and colleagues reflecting on this theme. One example reads: I feel the growing intolerance and polarization arising from extreme politics. Misunderstanding, conflict and tension always exist as part of the human experience. My intention is to create a site where people from different backgrounds can have an experience that reflects on hybridity and creates a sense of borderless-ness. By literally shining light on such issues, Wiharso expresses tolerance, acceptance and peace as a step towards enlightenment. The temple’s four entrances that lead to the central chandelier are used to communicate the idea that there are many paths to peace, through cultivating the acceptance of individual difference and racial and religious tolerance. Beatrice Thompson

FX HARSONO born 1949 Blitar, East Java, Indonesia | lives and works Yogyakarta, Central Java, Indonesia

FX Harsono’s art is about personal and collective identity and issues of justice and injustice within Indonesia. A sixth-generation descendant of Chinese immigrants he also has Javanese ancestry. The Chinese minority has long suffered discrimination in Indonesia, initially by Dutch colonialists and later under the New Order regime of President Suharto who banned Chinese festivals and ceremonies as well as the use of the Chinese language. Harsono explored this loss of his culture in Writing in the rain 2009, an iconic video in which the artist struggles in vain to write his name in Chinese characters as they are continuously washed away.In the mid-1970s Harsono was a co- founder of the New Art Movement and since then has been at the forefront of the few courageous advocates for human rights who have aimed to give a voice to the powerless. During the New Order, Harsono used compelling symbols in his art such as bloodstained cloths and coils of barbed wire, as in Power and oppression 1992–93, and wayang masks sawn off at the mouth to indicate the silencing of dissent in The voices controlled by the powers 1994. During social turmoil in 1998 many Chinese Indonesians were attacked by mobs. Harsono responded with a series of works related to these events and Chinese identity. Since 2009, inspired in part by a collection of old black-and-white photographs taken by his father, Harsono’s works have explored issues such as the killings of ethnic Chinese Indonesians between 1947–49 during violent unrest in the context of Indonesia’s struggle for independence. Gazing on collective memory 2016 is a poignant installation referring to the tragic history of the Chinese in Indonesia. The seemingly fragile work consists of a cluster of spindly wooden stands that support memorabilia including photographic portraits, delicate porcelain offering bowls and school books. Hundreds of electric candles hover over this assemblage, casting a warm golden light and alluding to the resilience of individuals and communities who are damaged by, but survive, a brutal history. The end of Suharto’s New Order enabled the emergence of a genuinely democratic political system in Indonesia, but Harsono has continued to advocate for a truer version of history so that younger generations might learn from the failures of the past to create a more inclusive society for all Indonesians. Dr Caroline Turner and Carol Cains

MELATI SURYODARMO born 1969 Surakarta, Central Java, Indonesia | lives and works Surakarta, Central Java, Indonesia and Gross Gleidingen, Germany

Transaction of hollows 2016 is a durational performance set within a stark white room; a liminal space charged with transformative powers over the human body. Through a basic unscripted choreography, the gallery becomes a shared stage upon which an unspoken social contract is enacted between two main protagonists: jemparingan archer Melati Suryodarmo, and the audience, a group formed through happenstance. Across four hours, the uniformed body of Suryodarmo undergoes intense practice: the repeated setting of an arrow in a gendawa (traditional Javanese bow), a methodical drawing of its string, concentrated aim at a conceptual target, and the subsequent firing of the bamboo arrow. This sequence of actions is repeated 800 times, and is highly demanding in its physical replication and psychological insistence. In this space sound is privileged: the air is split as each arrow swishes through it, piercing the tension-filled atmosphere with the sound of a hollow ‘thwack … thwack … thwack’. This repeated sound is akin to a chant, a regular aural rhythm that accumulates to induce a trance-like state in the performer, and silent obedience from the group. Necessarily, Suryodarmo places herself in a state of trained meditation. Specifically, she ruminates on contemporary society’s misguided drive to achieve more, acquire more, and to do so with an ever-increasing speed and voracity. According to the artist, such is the flawed pursuit of an impossible utopia. Thus, the repeated set of actions undertaken in Transaction of hollows evokes a spiritual quest—a strength training exercise for the soul to safeguard against life’s vacuous temptations. Separate to, yet resulting from, the actions of the archer, the body of the spectator also undergoes a necessary transformation. As the viewer crosses the threshold to step inside Suyrodarmo’s live work, they are recast as participant. An immediate effect takes hold as a heightened awareness of the boundaries of one’s own body becomes paramount: one must be alert and silent; one should remain calm so as not to induce target-panic; one’s body must move in time with that of the performer’s, constantly shifting in position less serious injury result. In this way, Transaction of hollows is a ‘happening’ of adrenalin and endurance. With the upshot, only an awareness of one’s increased heartbeat remains of the soundscape, and in this interiority, we are returned from the herd to the individual. Jaklyn Babington

OCTORA born 1982 Bandung, West Java, Indonesia | lives and works ,

Octora emerged as an artist nearly two decades after the fall of the authoritarian New Order regime in 1998 and creates works that examine the past in a meaningful way. The artist’s reappraisal of Indonesia’s colonial history comes from a gendered perspective, one that is critical of its ongoing impact on the representation of women in present-day Indonesia. Considering the intersection between sexual difference and materiality, Octora’s early body of work presented a new way of engaging with Indonesia’s past using the binary positions of materials (hard versus soft, masculine versus feminine). In her recent series, she is focused on the unstable ground between image making, official history and collective memory in Indonesia. The series comprises five works—performance, installation and twodimensional works—that highlight the performative nature of colonial visual culture. In the two-dimensional works, Octora looks at the relationship between photography and Dutch colonialism through the prism of Bali, using steel plates, bronze and printmaking techniques. Octora is interested in the artist’s ethical responsibility, particularly in how image making both challenges and perpetuates the circulation of visual materials from the colonial past. Octora sourced early twentieth-century images of Balinese women from the ’ Leiden University’s online repository before replicating the pictures through digital photography using herself as the model. By inserting herself in the images, she turns back the colonial gaze through her direct stare at the viewer. In Samsara 2017, Octora takes this idea further: the ‘native woman’ is now, ironically, hidden behind exotic trappings—the photograph is pierced and obscured by ornate brass Balinese hair accessories. In the one-hour durational performance Global apartheid voyeurism: The pose 2017, the artist strikes a pose between two reflective steel plates accompanied by a Mandarin love song ‘Love without end’ [不了情] (1961), composed by Wok Luk Ling and sung by Tsui Ping. Despite the glamorous pose, Octora’s body is supported precariously by a pair of high heels and a steel ring that encircles her neck like a Victorian posing stand. The discomfort between the artist’s unstable position and the haunting love song further illustrates the tension in the gaze and its accompanying affect. A reflection of how the current generation of Indonesian artists engage with technologies and global issues in the art world, Octora’s works not only underline the shift from image to object, and object back to image, but also the change from material to information and from digital to analogue. Her series of works are performing objects that bind the model, the camera, the photographer and the contemporary viewer. Dr Wulan Dirgantoro

TITA SALINA born 1973 Palembang, South Sumatra, Indonesia | lives and works Jakarta, West Java, Indonesia

In Tita Salina’s practice, intervention, installation and moving image come together in response to site-specific issues that have global resonance. 1001st island – the most sustainable island in archipelago 2015 explores transnational issues of community disenfranchisement, environmental pollution and government corruption as they manifest within the Indonesian government’s grand plan for the restoration and redevelopment of Jakarta Bay. Long plagued with a legion of environmental issues, Jakarta Bay and its environs are impacted by extreme pollution, the reduction of important fishing stocks, and rapid land sinkage due to groundwater extraction that provides drinking water for Jakarta’s 10 million inhabitants. Combined with the threat of rising sea levels, these problems jeopardise communities of small-scale fishermen and coastal traders who live on and around the bay. The government’s solution to the complex environmental and social issues is to build a giant sea wall across the bay to transform it into a man-made lagoon protected from flooding, populate it with new artificial islands, and redevelop the foreshore areas, moving existing coastal communities outside the city precincts. Many are sceptical about the efficacy of the plan and criticise it as scientifically dubious, socially discriminatory and financially irresponsible. To create 1001st island, Salina collaborated with local fishermen from one of the threatened communities to collect some of the plastic rubbish that plagues the bay. Wrapped in a fishing net to construct an artificial island, it was then dragged behind a fishing boat into the bay and released to become the 1001st island in the chain of islands north of Jakarta known as the Thousand Islands. Ironically, due to plastic’s longevity and because it floats on water, the island is almost indestructible. The process was filmed by a drone camera from above and shows Salina standing or lying resolutely on the island, alone at sea. The work is one of a series Salina is producing with fellow artist Irwan Ahmett through the platform The flame of the Pacific. Their aim is to explore and negotiate instability and tensions in the communities of the Pacific region and, through a performative platform, create an imaginary space where issues can be addressed. So far, the artists have built networks with local communities in 16 projects across Taiwan, China, Japan, Indonesia and New Zealand, and, through collaborative ‘everyday acts of social disobedience … intervened in the status quo through art’.1 Carol Cains

TISNA SANJAYA born 1958 Bandung, West Java, Indonesia | lives and works Bandung, West Java, Indonesia

Senior Indonesian artist Tisna Sanjaya was a founding member of the 1980s Bandung-based art movement jeprut—a Sundanese word for a unique regenerative force. Jeprut is analogous to a short-circuiting of the everyday, where existing conditions are broken by an exploding light, resulting in new energies and possibilities. During Suharto’s reign, and together with his collaborators, Sanjaya staged performance-based ‘happenings’ of a tactically improvised and abstract nature. To shield the jeprut artists from government censure, works were performed and concluded quickly, existing only as ephemeral experience. Adopting the mantra ‘Say it (even if bitter), and then pray it’,1 Sanjaya’s works can be understood as art activism, publicly broadcast to local and global effect in the post-Reformasi era. The artist’s performance installation Seni penjernih dialog (Art as purifying dialogue) 2019 borrows the form of an Indonesian boat known as the kora-kora, popularly recognised as a fairground ride of kinetic swinging action, and is a work experienced in two distinct parts. The initial site-specific performance will incorporate a metal korakora sailed on the highly polluted Citarum River in Bandung,2 where Sanjaya will lead a series of public debates and discussions on a range of political and environmental issues between residents of the river, his local uleema (Islamic scholars), Indonesian military representatives, government officials and other professionals. The open dialogue that results will be recorded and installed for his second performance at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra. Here, Sanjaya’s work will take the form of a performance lecture, delivered by the artist on top of a wooden kora-kora, elaborately decorated with the artist’s visualisations of Pancasila and Khilafah—two competing religious ideologies. This double performance stretches Sanjaya’s work across two countries, with various participants and multiple audiences, forging a cross-cultural dialogue and a sociological striving for greater religious, cultural, social and transnational understanding: ‘my symbolic efforts, and art statement in response to the global and local era in a peaceful way’ is an ‘optimistic symbol of hope facing changes in the world’. By welcoming Australian participants to join the discussions and to begin new ones in an open pedagogical program, the artist aims to ‘find a new way, a fresh and inspiring alternative peace effort. To work to find balance for humanity’s voice, a polite local ethic and spiritual value in the form of art’. Jaklyn Babington

UJI ‘HAHAN’ HANDOKO EKO SAPUTRO born 1983 Kebumen, Central Java, Indonesia | lives and works Yogyakarta, Central Java, Indonesia ADI ‘UMA GUMMA’ KUSUMA born 1985 Magelang, Central Java, Indonesia | lives and works Yogyakarta, Central Java, Indonesia

The art world is a sophisticated network of systems of influence, creating a complex interdependent industry ruled by what Uji ‘Hahan’ Handoko Eko Saputro has termed ‘The Holy Trinity’—the collector, the gallery and the artist. Hahan’s raucously witty and bitingly honest practice is an investigation of these structures and how ‘The Holy Trinity’ are driven by the twin desires of both critical and commercial success. Hahan was in art school in Yogyakarta when the international art market first began to take interest in contemporary Indonesian art. By the mid-2000s prices started to climb steeply, and curators, collectors and dealers began to descend on Yogyakarta looking for the next big thing. By the late 2000s Indonesian artists were on the front cover of Sotheby’s auction catalogues, presented in solo exhibitions in leading international art museums and represented by powerhouse commercial galleries. Hahan watched this phenomenon unfold and meticulously tracked it. This diligent research informs his practice where the machinations of the art world remain the core subject. Silent Operation: Sign study based on the formula of contemporary (visual) art 2018–19 is Hahan’s most ambitious work to date. Working in collaboration with Adi ‘Uma Gumma’ Kusuma, the installation transforms an entire gallery into an immersive structural analysis of the art world. The installation itself embodies a sense of contemporaneity often found at art fairs and biennales, with neon lights in competing colours. It is overwhelming and slightly disconcerting. Anchoring the space is an interactive game application of a mind-map that seemingly tracks a route for success in the art world. Upon entering the viewer is invited to become a player in this game by participating in ‘network maintenance’ and pondering pricing as they seek to find the right formula for success as a contemporary artist. As the viewer navigates their movements they quickly discover that there is no clear pathway, no guarantee of success and endless relationships to maintain. Hahan’s practice is characterised by inclusivity; his aesthetics are compelling for the first-time gallery viewer and his semiotic jokes amusing for even the most hardened art historian. By addressing his audiences through multiple registers his practice enables every viewer to feel empowered. This careful support allows him to make transparent the convoluted processes of the closed structure of the art world in a bid to democratise it. Make no mistake, while Hahan’s work may be heralded by art critics, it is the general public’s approval he chases most. Mikala Tai

YUDHA ‘FEHUNG’ KUSUMA PUTERA born 1987 Magelang, Central Java, Indonesia | lives and works Yogyakarta, Central Java, Indonesia

A visual artist working predominantly in photography, Yudha ‘Fehung’ Kusuma Putera is a second- wave member of MES 56, a leading artist collective founded in 2002 to focus on the development of photographic practice in Indonesia. Fehung’s solo practice has recently pivoted toward the participatory, and the subjects of his work become crucial informants to his soft and nuanced studies of the human condition. Past, present and future come together 2017 started with his engagement and subsequent musings on his future family life. This led to an earnest enquiry into what makes family, beyond the nationalised, socio-political constructions of the family unit, long politicised as a crucial space for propaganda in Indonesia. Suharto’s Keluarga Berencana (Family Planning) program, based on the concept of ‘small, happy and prosperous families’, promoted a strict, nationalist family ideal: father as leader and protector, loyal wife by his side and two children, one boy, one girl. Suharto often modelled himself as the father of the nation to command and manipulate power, and even today the campaign’s sticky residue of stigma and exclusion still lingers. Same sex couples, couples from differing religions, those who choose not to marry or not to have children, cross-cultural families, divorced parents or adoptive families are just some of the interpretations of the family unit that sit firmly outside that of the state (or socially) sanctioned one. In Past, present and future come together Fehung reinterprets the family unit in a series of nine intimate photographs. During visits with families either one or two degrees of separation from MES 56, Fehung challenged his subjects to work together to identify the face or the head of their family and what kind of shape they might create using a prop to define their unit, as the artist states, ‘into one solid body’. In one photograph, a dog wrapped in animal print fabric sits at the centre, his family shrouded in black fabric behind. In another, the youngest child perches proudly above his family, who are hidden beneath red and white fabric suggesting the Indonesian flag (see p 1). When exhibited, the photographic series forms part of an installation where visitors can participate in the work by wrapping themselves in fabric to create a photograph of their own family unit. Performing new interpretations and representations of family is, after all, not only about what we publicly project, but what we choose to keep for ourselves. Edwina Brennan

ZICO ALBAIQUNI born 1987 Bandung, West Java, Indonesia | lives and works Bandung, West Java, Indonesia

Zico Albaiquni approaches painting by evoking moments in art history. He studies and interprets earlier genres and contexts, gathering motifs to probe fundamental questions about the role of artists and the circulation and function of art. In his theatrically laid-out compositions, Indonesian historical references and contemporary cultural icons coalesce across intersecting picture planes, bathed in a distinctive vibrant palette. Featured prominently among landscapes peppered with disparate juxtapositions are paradigms of the Mooi Indië (Beautiful Indies) tradition, a form of imported European Romantic painting that dominated Indonesian art during the colonial era. Albaiquni has also been inspired by the social realism of S Sudjojono, likening the seminal Indonesian modernist’s criticisms of colonial painters’ exoticised archipelago landscapes and tropes of palm trees and mountains—which often populate the fluorescent backgrounds of Albaiquni’s works—to the circulation of kitsch tourist art and advertising today. For evidently, the fine arts do not thrive in the Indies 2018 takes its title from a 1999 article by East Indies painting writer and researcher Koos van Brakel. It is set in a local painting shop, where Albaiquni places examples of gambar pemandangan, a landscape perspective teaching device, behind the distinctive columns of the ’s Arsenale exhibition space during Katharina Grosse’s 2015 display. These surround a nineteenth-century photograph of Papuan natives with misappropriated hand-painted feathers added to their headdress from the National Gallery of Australia’s Leo Haks collection.1 Ladies and gentlemen! Kami present, Ibu Pertiwi! 2018 (see pp 2–3) borrows aspects from Sudjojono’s 1965 painting Kami present, Ibu Pertiwi (Stand guard for our Motherland) under palm trees from a painting by Raden Saleh, the most celebrated Indonesian artist of the Mooi Indië era. The interior is based on the traditional Indonesian textiles hung in the 2018 Festival couleurs d’Indonésie exhibition in Paris, while a group of Javanese men in a plane fly above, an image taken from an imaginatively staged photograph from 1919. While collecting ideas from past genres, Albaiquni remains part of a new wave of Indonesian artists. He ventures beyond the remnant postcolonial views and socio- political motivations that informed his artistic predecessors, but also contemplates the traditional nature of pelukis (painter) in Indonesia, which draws connotations of community, ritual and spirituality. Combining these broad conceptual influences, Albaiquni experiments with questions of how the Indonesian landscape and its peoples have been represented in the past, and where Indonesian art, and he himself as an artist, fit within an internationalised art world today. Tarun Nagesh