Jakarta Biennale 2024, “50 Tahun Jakarta Biennale 1974–2024”

Every so often in its fifty-year history, the Jakarta Biennale has catalyzed a shift (the 1974 Indonesian New Art Movement started as a protest against its conservatism) or sparked a nationwide discourse about the state of Indonesian art (as with the experimental mid-nineties iterations).1 More recently, changes of format and structure—the cancellation of the 2000 edition due to insufficient funds, the 2009 “internationalization” in which other countries were invited to participate, the establishment of the Jakarta Biennale Foundation in 2014, the “pandemic edition” of 2021—have reflected developments in the way that contemporary art is made and understood. This anniversary edition of the Jakarta Biennale is presented as a celebration of its history, but the question remains of what is at stake.

At the main exhibition space in the Taman Ismail Marzuki complex—one of four venues alongside Gudskul, Komunitas Salihara, and Subo—a wall text and timeline is dedicated to the artists and art workers committed to the thankless work of biennial organizing. Yet beyond the attempt to historicize the exhibition and celebrate its continued existence, little information is provided about the curatorial framework of this iteration beyond that it has been organized according to a system resembling the “lumbung” practice of shared resources and nonhierarchical distribution. We learn that the biennale is “being held jointly by the Jakarta arts ecosystem with the main movers being art collectives in Jakarta who are members of the Majelis Jakarta,” or Jakarta Assembly, an umbrella for various collectives and institutions. This decentralized working method might be described as “un-curation.”2

At Taman Ismail Marzuki, this lends certain portions of the biennial a makeshift feel, with no clear categorization of its constituent elements. Works made by organizers-cum-artists Majelis Jakarta, for example, are set among those from the Lab Indonesiana: Baku Konek program (eighteen artists/collectives) and the sub-strands of the Curating Topography Trilogy program (sixty artists/collectives), without physical division or designated exhibition flow. This deliberate refusal of spatial organization is also reflected in the biennale’s events timetable. Many programs—performances, artist talks, film screenings, and zine launches, especially those organized by artist collectives in Palestine x Majelis Jakarta: Our People Are Our Mountains—were announced at short notice, often the day before.

For all that the main exhibition suffers from a lack of cohesion, a number of rhymes and patterns emerge. In this fast-sinking metropolis, to make art is to always be conscious about land and water issues. Residential crises are stressed by PannaFoto Institut’s photography series, including Abyan Haidar’s portraits of peculiar tiny dwellings “Di Balik Pintu Impian” (2024), Fernando Randy’s “Pembangunan untuk Siapa?” (2020–22) on the ludicrous glory of condominium development, and Adhi Wicaksono’s “Bertahan, Jakarta!” (2024) depicting the flooded outskirts of North Jakarta, whose denizens choose to remain and adapt instead of relocating. The installation Sambil Menyelam Minum Air, Eh Keselek (2024) by Atelir Ceremai x Sun Community x Onesys Vincent—a muddy pond inset with miniature buildings that double as plinths for Vincent’s abstract sculptures—responds to Jakarta’s flood history, which dates back to the Dutch colonial era. The work focuses on recent floods and their different causes, from the over-extraction of ground water to rainwater overflow, rising sea levels, and zoning policy, and draws on research predicting that a quarter of the city will be underwater by 2050.3

Though the 2024 biennale is no greater than the sum of its parts, there are vital moments among the prevailing bleakness about Jakarta’s future. For the inaugural Baku Konek residency (co-organized by ruangrupa and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology), artists collaborated with local communities all around small towns in Indonesia. A few works take the “residency” point literally. Among these are Tepian Kolektif x Forum Sudutpandang’s interactive site-specific installation Spotless Future (2024), in which visitors walk barefoot on soil under a scaffolding and listen to the music of water over small stones, and Wiyoga Muhardanto’s video work and installation Pasang Surut Kejayaan (2024), which regards the historical architecture of Rumah Singgah Sultan Siak as a node of power and bureaucracy. Nani Nurhayati, a resident artist at Komunitas Sikukeluang in Pekanbaru, devised a kinetic sculpture Tepung-Pa-Tepung (2024) out of metal sheets and natural remedies (turmeric, rice, sago, young coconut leaves) to tell a story about the region’s healing tradition, while Zuraisa worked with villagers in Sukabumi, West Java, to build an improvised kiln for her project Yang Liar Yang Menghidupi (2024).

The lumbung practice of this Jakarta Biennale invites participating parties to pool their resources and distribute power equally. Taken to its logical extension, this model offers an alternative form of artmaking that is distant from a center that can no longer hold. As urban conditions become increasingly untenable—as made evident by Komunitas Paseban’s Pohon Cerita (2024), in which visitors are invited to scribble complaints about city-living onto leaf-shaped pieces of paper and hang them on a dried tree—artists might work better and enliven spaces outside of urban “art hubs.” The Jakarta Biennale’s latest change could prompt a new understanding of art and its ecosystem, catalyzing wider change and leaving a powerful legacy by empowering new movements outside the metropolitan centers.