Art Jakarta Receipts: Wool and Warships

Art Jakarta 2025 3–5 October 2025

Much of the art world is playing defence right now, but you wouldn’t know it from this year’s edition of Art Jakarta, which saw an expanded footprint, some courageous presentations, and a large, youthful crowd at the opening on Friday.

While the audience skews young, the fair itself has matured quickly. Fair Director Tom Tandio noted that a lot has changed since the last time I attended in 2019.

‘2019 was the first time we moved out of the Ritz Carlton hotel, when I took over the fair, and showed in a convention hall,’ he said. ‘For an Indonesian audience that was actually very new.’

Last year, the event was bumped at short notice from its previous location at the Jakarta Convention Center by the 43rd ASEAN Summit. ‘Sixty-something events were told to leave the hall,’ he said. ‘We scrambled and eventually found this space.’

‘This space’ is JIEXPO Kemayoran. It’s a few kilometres north of the city centre—not trivial in a city whose circulatory system is often clotted. (Traffic was especially severe on Saturday when Indonesia’s National Armed Forces shuffled vehicles and personnel around the city for a surprise birthday party. ‘We just found out a few days ago,’ Tandio said. ‘That’s Indonesia!’) But whatever was lost in location was more than made up for by the more modern space and its high, arched ceilings.

On balance, galleries said crowds were larger than in previous years, but sales were a little slower, as they are worldwide now.

Joseph Kong, Sales Manager at Gajah Gallery (Singapore, Jakarta, Yogyakarta), said the fair had ‘levelled up’ since the pandemic. Their sales included 3D-printed works by Balinese artist Jemana Murti—who scans temple walls, distorts the shapes and adds other motifs before painting them unearthly hues—for prices ranging from SGD $5,000 to $12,000. They also sold a large bear painting by Indonesian artist Yunizar for SGD $66,000, among several other works.

On the fair’s first day, Dea Aprilia, Gallery Manager at ROH (Jakarta), praised the year’s edition as ‘vibrant’ and said she was ‘excited to welcome more international friends’, including visitors from major institutions in Thailand and Japan.

ROH is one of Indonesia’s leading galleries, and they had a fittingly multi-faceted presence at the fair.

They presented Syaiful Garibaldi’s Antara Muara (2024), a laser-engraved mycelium leather box elevated by sticks in the Spot section of the fair.

They also had a small Roh Projects booth devoted to wonderful washy landscape paintings and pieces using frangipani wood and patchouli by Ittah Yoda (Virgile Ittah and Kai Yoda), which were created during a residency in Bali.

In their main booth, they showed a host of artists at different price points, ranging from Aurora Arazzi’s crafty paper illusion of a bread crust on tile for U.S. $800 to a series of 2 x 2.5 metre black and white paintings by Yogyakarta-based artist Eko Nugroho for U.S. $60,000.

One of the most intriguing works was the sculpture Y (on repeat) (2024) by Bali-based artist Faisal Habibi, who addresses Indonesia’s waste management problem by upcycling found materials in ways he describes as ‘low intervention’.

He salvaged PVC pipes from a dump, delighted by their voids, and—inspired by his wife’s workouts—found purple pilates balls that fit snugly inside them.

Politics looms large in Indonesian contemporary art, but it was relatively scarce at the fair. One exception was Tisna Sanjaya’s Ganjel (2024), which includes a sculpture of one figure on another’s shoulders, an allusion to President Jokowi and his eldest son Gibran Rakabuming Raka. The latter will become Vice President later this month at age 37 after rules were modified to allow those under 40 to inhabit the office, a change that prompted protests and accusations of nepotism.

For the most part, works by local galleries were as bright as the bougainvillaea bushes whose fluorescent pinks, oranges, and purples divide the highways here.

One of the most photographed booths belonged to Galeri ZEN1, which has spaces in Bali and Jakarta. Its director, Nicolaus Kuswanto, said two corporations and one institution had enquired about a presentation that brought together works by two Yogyakarta-based artists—a giant shanty town ‘ship without an ocean’ (ostensibly metal, but made of cardboard and wood) by Yudi Sulistyo and crocheted wool coral by Mulyana—with an asking price of U.S. $280,000.

The most conceptual booth was ShanghART‘s presentation of a newspaper stand by Robert Zhao Renhui, who represented Singapore at the Venice Biennale this year. They sold daily newspapers—newsprint posters, really—reporting months-old activities at a fallen tree stump (a monsoon victim) the artist has been following for three years. Zhao delighted in the project’s subversion of news cycles, offering all three days’ newspapers on opening day, and the commercial imperatives of art fairs by selling his works for U.S. $8, ‘cheaper than the entrance ticket’, he laughed.

(The booth also featured photographs in tropical hardwood frames for SGD $6,000 and a large print of the tree trunk for SGD $15,000.)

ShanghART Singapore Director Chun Aik Goh said he was excited to introduce Robert Zhao Renhui to Indonesian audiences. He said the fair had made improvements in every aspect this year.

Mariia Zhuchenko, Associate Director at Sullivan+Strumpf (Sydney, Melbourne, and Singapore), said they presented works in the SGD $1,000 to $15,000 range, selling out of all 15 paintings by Indonesian artist Enggar Rhomadioni on the first day. They also placed works by Carmen Ceniga Prado and mesmerising sculptural paperworks by Irfan Hendrian.

‘We connected with many new collectors,’ she said. ‘This year the Jakarta team did a really good job bringing collectors from the region.’

Tandio said Indonesia has the biggest collector base in Southeast Asia, but the fair had also reached beyond them to invite conglomerates and the wealthy families behind them. They brought in collectors from Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Japan, and Korea, and collaborated with other ambitious independent regional fairs.

‘This year, we are working with Art Collaboration Kyoto (ACK), exchanging collectors; they brought some to Art Jakarta, and we’ll bring some later to ACK. We also worked with Art Busan with the same idea,’ he said.

Helping support the invitation of collectors and journalists (I was invited as part of a media partnership), ample corporate sponsorships are in place, the funniest of which was a Roca shower karaoke booth by Jakarta design studio this/PLAY.

Tandio said he insisted that corporate sponsors collaborate with artists as part of their participation. ‘We want these corporates to be exposed to art, and to do projects outside Art Jakarta with artists. We are trying to support corporate collecting.’

Compared to the likes of Frieze London and Art Basel Paris, Tandio described Art Jakarta as ‘more like a community fair’, and it certainly felt inclusive. But the commitment to building an art ecosystem and the execution—from the quality of the walls and the lighting to the collector outreach—and the trajectory of the fair’s growth suggests much greater ambition. —[O]

Main image: Galeri ZEN1's booth presenting mixed media works by Yudi Sulistyo and crocheted wool coral by Mulyana at Art Jakarta 2024. Photo: Art Jakarta.