JakartaArt Guide

Jakarta is home to the National Gallery of Indonesia, one of the country’s most important institutions, which houses over 1700 artworks by Indonesian and international artists such as Raden Saleh, Pierre Soulages, Sutjipto Adi, and Zao Wou-Ki.

The most recent addition to the energetic art scene in Jakarta, The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara (Museum MACAN), is the first Indonesian museum fully devoted to modern and contemporary art. Works by both Indonesian and international artists, among them Andy Warhol, Arahmaiani, Cai Guo Qiang, Christine Ay Tjoe, Karel Appel, Lee Ufan, Robert Rauschenberg, and Yayoi Kusama, have been shown at the museum.

Based in the southern part of the city, Ruangrupa—loosely translating to ‘space for art’—is a leading artist-run space in Jakarta. It is also the name of the founding art collective, established in 2000, that consists of Indonesian contemporary artists Ade Darmawan, Reza Afisina, and Iswanto Hartono, among others. The collective’s initiatives include OK. Video—Indonesia Media Arts Festival, which created a platform for a wider range of artworks than the standard art fair encompassing digital imaging, sound art, and internet-based works, along with an exciting programme of workshops. Ruangrupa was appointed as the curator of the 2022 edition of Documenta in Kassel, becoming the first Documenta artistic director from the Asian region.

Jakarta has also witnessed pivotal moments in Indonesian modern art history. In 1902, an arts organisation called Batavia Art Circle (Bataviasche Kunstkring) was founded . After moving into a building in the centre of the city in 1914, the art society presented important exhibitions of works by Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Kees van Dongen, Marc Chagall, Wasilly Kandinsky, James Ensor, and Käthe Kollwitz, among others.

In the late 1930s, the Union of Indonesian Painters (Persatuan Ahli-Ahli Gambar Indonesia or PERSAGI)—Indonesia’s first artist association founded in Jakarta in 1938—criticised the European style of paintings that depicted the romantic landscapes of the Dutch East Indies. They advocated a new modern art that held a distinctly Indonesian identity and highlighted the struggle of the Indonesian people under the colonial system.

The New Art Movement (Gerakan Seni Rupa Baru) of 1974 sprung out of protests during the judging of the first edition of what would later be known as the Jakarta Biennale, centering on the institutional limitation of what could constitute Indonesian fine art practice. Key figures of the movement include artists and art-world figures, such as Jim Supangkat, Dadang Christanto, and FX Harsono, who experimented with the various media of installations, ready-mades, photographs, and photo-realist paintings.