Cemeti Gallery, later Art House, operated as an alternative space and, rather than be governed by sales, they focused on exhibiting …
Main Content
Chapters

Curatorial Practice and Jim Supangkat
An appreciation of the role of curators was developing as the result of contact with international exhibitions of Asian art and the …
Continue Reading about Curatorial Practice and Jim Supangkat →

Politics and Art in the 1990s
In the 1990s Indonesian socio/political art, which had a history dating from the independence movement, was the art most often chosen for …

Reformasi and Art
Artists were affected by and often closely involved with Reformasi and their artworks provide an important insight the events of 1998. …

Global artists
Global artists The transition to a global perspective in Indonesian visual art is particularly seen in the careers of three artists: …

Global Exhibition
Indonesian art, emerging from decades of the repressive Suharto regime, began to participate in large-scale international survey exhibitions …
All of my work is related to my country, the hard situation of people here which I want to comment on in ways that are sometimes negative... but I feel strongly connected to this place where I was born. - Arahmaiani

Arahmaiani, Make-Up or Break-Up, 2007, flag performance in Martin Place, Sydney.
Background
The text and resources on this website are based on ten years of research for a PhD thesis and I wanted those involved or interested in Indonesian art to be able to access this material as otherwise information was limited.
A Brief History
Modern and Contemporary are complex terms and have different meanings in the context of Indonesian art of the last century. There are important distinctions between the terms: modern, modernization and Modernism.
About the Author
After a career teaching the history and theory of art to art students, interest in non Euro – American art in international exhibitions prompted me to research Southeast Asian and then Indonesian art.
Resources
My articles published in the course of my research and some other essays have been made available.