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THE CHOSEN IMAGE

INDONESIAN ARTISTS AND THE INTERNATIONAL CIRCUIT

Dr Susan Ingham UNSW College of Fine Arts1

Since the 1990s Indonesian contemporary art has been primarily known outside Indonesia by

the work of a handful of artists who were selected for international survey exhibitions or

biennales. Such artists as Heri Dono, Dadang Christanto, Arahmaiani, Mella Jaarsma and

Nindityo Adipurnomo became globe-trotting art stars while other artists and forms of art

inside Indonesia were overlooked. Heri Dono and Dadang Christanto will be well known to

most Indonesian researchers, especially in Australia, and many will also have encountered the

work of Arahmaiani, Mella and Nindityo.

A graph with a selection of the major international exhibitions from the 1990s indicates the

participation of Indonesian artists. These are either the most famous historically, such as the

Venice Biennale, or influential where Asian art was concerned, such as the Asia-Pacific

Triennial at the Queensland Art Gallery. Few Indonesian artists participated in international

exhibitions before the 1990s apart from Affandi. Heri, Arahmaiani and Dadang and are

highlighted in red, blue and green indicating their repeated selection, and Jim Supangkat was

regularly used as the curator or commissioner for Indonesian art in these shows. The

international selectors were not only choosing the same artists, they repeatedly used the same

curatorial contacts from in country. According to biennale critics, this pattern of repeatedly

selected artists occurred in other countries and in the more recent Asian biennales such as the

Fukuoka Asian Art Triennial in Japan or the Gwangju Biennale in South Korea.

1 This paper was presented to the 17th Biennial Conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia in Melbourne 1 – 3 July 2008. It has been peer reviewed via a double blind referee process and appears on the Conference Proceedings Website by permission of the author who retains copyright. This paper may be downloaded for fair use under the Copyright Act (1954), its later amendments and other relevant legislation.

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1993 1996 1999 2000 2002 2004

VENICE

BIENNALE

(Affandi invited

1954. No other

Indonesian invited

until 2002)

1997:

Sponsored/satellite

exhibition:

Invited:Heri Dono

Satellite:

Arahma ian iDadang Christanto

Tisna Sanjaya

Made Wianta

2005 :

Satellite:

SAO PAULO

BIENAL

1996: 23 rd Bienal :

Commissioner:

Supangkat.

Heri Dono

Marintan Sirait

1998 : 24 th Bienal

Dadang Christanto

(no Bienal) 2002 25th Bienal:

Arahmaiani 2004 26 th Bienal

Heri Dono

HAVANA

BIENNALE

1993 Supangkat

(Indonesian

participation

unknown).

1997: 6 th

Nindityo AdipurnomoArahma ian iAndar Manik

Marintan Sirait

Agus Suwage

2000 : 7 th

Bagja Dermawan,

Iwan (Iweng)

Heri Dono

Krisna Murti

2003 : 8 th

political and

economic problems:

no Indonesian

artists.

ASIA PACIFIC

TRIENNIAL

Supangkat

Dadang ChristantoHeri Dono

Nyoman Erawan

FX Harsono

Sudjana Kerton

A.D. Pirous

Ivan Sagito

Srihadi Soedarsono

Dede Eri Supria

Supangkat

Nindityo AdipurnomoAnusapati

Arahma ian iMarintan Sirait

Agus Suwage

Mella Jaarsma

MoelyonoTisna Sanjaya

S Teddy D

Dadang Christanto

Brahma Tirta Sari

Heri Dono (with

Elision ensemble)

Heri Dono

2006 : opening of

new Gallery of Modern Art,

GOMA.

Eko Nugroho

TRADITIONS

& TENSIONS

Asia Society NY

one exhbt . only

Supangkat

Nindityo AdipurnomoArahma ian i

Dadang ChristantoHeri Dono

FX Harsono

I Wayan Bendi

INDONESIAN PARTICIPATION IN MAJOR INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITIONSHeri Dono , Arahmaiani and Dadang Christanto highlighted, Supangkat bold

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The question is why were these particular artists repeatedly selected? The answer lies partly

in the conditions that pertained in Indonesia in the 1990s and partly in the preferences and

machinery of international art institutions. The quality of their work is not in question, all are

committed artists with a well-respected body of work although some may criticise their use of

the same artwork in different exhibitions around the world and others may question what

direction these artists can take, now they are mid-career.

The research extended beyond the work of the artists themselves to the infrastructure for the

arts in Indonesia and the strategies of international survey exhibitions, an approach to art that

was classified by sociologists in the 1980s as ‘cultural production’. As Janet Wolff in her

book, The Social Production of Art, reported, there had been a tendency to assume that an art

work was simply ‘created’ and institutional and other factors that were influential in artistic

production were ignored.2 A balance still needs to be maintained in case the ‘cultural

production’ approach to art concentrates too much on the context of the work or the biography

of the artist rather than the work itself, its content and aesthetic techniques.

Three main elements influenced artistic production in Indonesia in the 1990s. These were: the

cultural policies of the Suharto regime and its arts infrastructure, the art market that developed

from the 1980s and the explosion of biennales in the 1990s.

The cultural policies of the Suharto Regime

Heri, Dadang and others of this generation of artists were heirs to a cultural rift that occurred

after the 1965 coup that replaced President Sukarno’s Guided Democracy with Suharto’s

Orde Baru, or New Order. The New Order suppressed political criticism in the arts as

elsewhere, and favoured cultural policies that promoted national unity and ordered

development. The traditional and Javanese arts were given priority over those of the diverse

ethnicities of the archipelago in order to project this image of a uniform culture. Where the

modern visual arts were concerned, art that provided the least challenge, such as decor art and

abstract painting that focused on formal properties, gained preference, and artists working

with experimental forms or activists with critical content had limited outlets to exhibit. A

similar friction between different forms of modern art was common internationally, but the

Coup of 1965 in Indonesia generated a cultural polarisation sufficiently extreme that tension

still remains between advocates of Modernist painting based on formal properties and those

activist artists working with experimental forms. 2 Wolff, Janet, 1981, The Social Production of Art, Macmillan Education Ltd, pp.29 - 31.

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These two works, one by A.D. Pirous and the other by Heri Dono, were painted only a year

apart and were both exhibited at the first Asia-Pacific Triennial in Queensland in 1993.

Pirous’ work has a seductive aesthetic appeal based on rich colour and texture and abstract

triangular shapes, the calligraphy referencing Koranic literature as part of Indonesian

tradition. Pirous represents a generation of artists who were very successful and dominated

the Indonesian art world in the 1980s.

Aesthetic beauty by comparison is not an aspect of Heri Dono’s work. He uses the very

Indonesian Wayang puppet figures in a distorted, anarchic way to reflect the absurdity of

different political parties in elections rigged in favour of the regime. In this, the first Asia-

Pacific Triennial, Heri also presented two installation pieces and gave a performance, all of

which commented on conditions in Indonesia.

The restrictive and repressive nature of Suharto’s regime on writers and performers is well–

known, and the effect of such policies as NKK, Normalisasi Kehidupan Kampus, or the

nomalisation of campus life and the suppression of student activism in the universities.3 The

effect was substantial in the visual arts, according to Dwi Marianto, Head of Research at ISI,

3 See Budiman, Arief, Hatley, Barbara, et al., 1999, Reformasi: crisis and change in Indonesia, Melbourne, Monash Asia Institute, and Aspinall, E. T., 2000, Political opposition and the transition from authoritarian rule: the case of Indonesia, PhD Thesis, Australian National University, p.161.

Left: Heri Dono, Campaign of the three parties, 1992, and Right: A.D. Pirous, When the earth quakes 11, 1991.

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Institut Seni Indonesia, in Yogyakarta, the first art academy founded in Indonesia after

Independence. He reported that it led to the entrenchment of Abstract Modernist painting in

the art academies in the 1980s by teachers who were themselves abstract painters, allowing

teaching to concentrate on visual issues and the formal aspects of art and avoid socially or

politically contentious content.4 Added to this, if students wished to exhibit publically they

needed to obtain the authorisation of these teachers.

Nevertheless there was an on-going resistance amongst art students to this conservative

education, notably beginning with the Desember Hitam or the Black December art student

protest against the preference given to abstract painting in the Jakarta Biennial of 1974. In

1992 Dadang Christanto, Heri Dono and other activist artists organised art events protesting

the selection for the Yogyakarta Biennale that insured only established and conventional art

would be displayed. Heri gave an art performance with grave diggers from the cemetery in a

work titled Kuda Binal, or ‘Wild Horse’, wild, or binal being a word play on biennale.

Similarly Jim Supangkat had been a leading figure in the Gerakan Seni Rupa Baru, the New

Art Group that in the 1970s rejected the conventional forms of painting and sought to

represent the reality of Indonesian modern life with experimental media and installations. By

the 1990s Supangkat had transformed himself into an international curator and the public face

of Indonesian art in the international art forum, and even today it could be argued that he

remains the Indonesian curator most recognised by the international art world.

Infrastructure

Little state infrastructure was provided for modern art and none at all for such contentious art.

The Ministry of Culture provided for the visual arts through Taman Budaya, the Culture Parks

or the Dewan Kesenian or Arts Councils that invariably favoured the cultural aims of national

unity and discouraged experimentation5. Legislation dating as far back as 1963 required a

license for exhibitions and often notification and payments to the police, which ensured

conformity and became a system of control that operated at every level.6

The attempt to found a national gallery to fill the void in infrastructure for modern art is an

example that illustrates this situation. In 1994 Jim Supangkat organised and curated the

exhibition Contemporary Art of the Non-Aligned Counties in buildings across the road from

Gambir Railway Station in Jakarta that are available for hire from Depdikbud, the Department

4 Marianto, Dwi M., 1995, unpublished PhD thesis, Surrealist painting in Yogyakarta, p. 175. 5 See Jones, Tod, 2005, Indonesian cultural policy, 1950-2003: culture, institutions, government, PhD thesis,

Australian Digital Thesis program, Curtin University. 6 Legislation: Undang-undang no. 5, Pnps 1963, tentang Kegiatan Politik.

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of Education and Culture. Three years after the exhibition Supangkat and others were still

working to convince the bureaucracy that the space should be converted into a permanent

gallery to house a national collection, run an exhibition program and link Indonesia to the

international art world. Artworks were collected from various government departments by

Prof. Dr. Edi Sedyawati, Director-General of Culture, but since the best modern artworks are

held privately, it was not considered a very good collection.

This was to be the Galeri Nasional Indonesia. The bureaucracy refused to provide

comprehensive funding but made a ruling allowing exhibitors to seek sponsorship and collect

funds according to the system described by Supangkat as Kasnegara.7 This system is applied

widely, from universities to oil revenues, and since nothing operates without government

authorisation, it is an essential step in any project. When sponsorship is found, the

department receives the monies and then distributes them – a procedure that is clearly open to

corruption. After one proposal after another fell through, the Galeri Nasional eventually

opened in May 1999 with tenuous financing and faint praise from Supangkat because of its

inadequacies.

7 Interview, Jim Supangkat, Bandung, 24/04/05

Galeri Nasional Indonesia, Gambir, Exhibition of work by Rita Widagdo, 2005.

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The exhibitors must organise and fund exhibitions, expensive in comparison to other

commercial galleries,8 and artworks are for sale, something that was never intended in the

original concept for the national gallery. There is, though, a certain kudos in holding an

exhibition or retrospective at the Galeri Nasional, as is indicated by Rita Widagdo’s

exhibition in 2005. Rita Widagdo has had a highly respected career in sculpture of major

abstract pieces for the public and commercial sites of the Orde Baru, and the Galeri provides

the largest public exhibition space for such art in Jakarta. It is obvious, though, that

exhibitors with substantial sponsorship are in a better position to exhibit than impecunious

emerging artists.

Today a website provides an impressive mission statement and lists exhibitions, but the

Galeri Nasional has become what it was when it began: a space for hire, and a very different

institution from those of the neighbouring states of Singapore and Malaysia.

The Art Market

Likewise the art market provided little outlet for experimental or contentious art. Commercial

galleries markedly increased in number between 1984 and 1987 but the majority were selling

paintings and antiques as interior decoration for tourists and the growing prosperous middle

class of the Suharto regime. 9

There were other spaces, among them galleries to promote the work of the successful

owner/artist, such as Griya Popo Iskandar in Bandung, the Museum Haji Widayat at

Magelang, and most famously the Affandi Museum in Yogyakarta. There were some

exhibitions spaces such as Bentara Budaya established by the Kompas/Gramedia publishing

group or institutions such as the Goethe and Erasmushuis, but none of these spaces had a

regular exhibition program, provided documentation or any of the administrative support

usually associated with galleries.

Auction houses emerged at the same time and were a barometer of the favoured artists. Until

the late 1990s it was the established Modernists, including Sadali, A.D. Pirous, Sunaryo, Popo

Iskandar and Srihadi who dominated the market, a work by Srihadi attracting prices between

Rp85 million to Rp1 billion. The more unstable the economy, the more likely investors

8 Email, FX Harsono 15/10/02. Harsono had to delay his exhibition in GNI due to lack of sponsorship. It was eventually mounted in June 2003 and curated by Hendro Wiyanto. 9 Agus Dermawan T., “Promoting Art through Galleries and Other Sources”, Soemantri, H., ed., 1998, Visual Art, Indonesian Heritage, Singapore, Archipelago Press, pp. 134-135, and Agus Dermawan T., “Galeri Yang Sebentar Ada Sebentar Pergi,” Galleries that Briefly Come and Go, 2005, Visual Arts, Vol. 8, Agustus/September, pp.41-43.

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would play the art market as they had the stock market, and, with Krismon, the monetary

crisis that preceded Reformasi, paintings, became a commodity like money.10

The art market continues to be a significant factor in the Indonesian art world because art

initiatives elsewhere normally supported by state institutions, in Indonesia are dependent on

private sponsorship seeking a return on investment. This makes them more likely to be

unstable and transitory: art magazines come and go overnight and major exhibitions

seemingly mounted for public benefit are closed suddenly. The most distinctive example of

this was the CP Biennale, curated by Jim Supangkat. The second biennale in 2005 was closed

after scandal involving one of the works and pressure from a Muslim fundamentalist group,

and no further biennales are to be mounted.11

Experimental artists with contentious work sought alternative exhibition spaces. The first and

still the foremost of these was Galeri Cemeti in Yogyakarta, founded by the artists Mella

Jaarsma and her husband, Nindityo Adipurnomo in their own home in 1988. Their first two

exhibitions were of their own work and that of their student friends from ISI including Heri

Dono.

Much alternative art is ephemeral, it is performance or installation work that is site - specific

and community - based and often does not leave an object that can be easily marketed,

collected and preserved. With no outlet through state infrastructure or the art market, this art

survived, as did Cemeti itself, by developing international contacts at a time when

international interest in Asian art was growing. Cemeti and Jim Supangkat became the first

point of contact for international curators selecting art for biennales

Biennales

By the late 1980s European and American cultural institutions, influenced by postcolonial

theories, were beginning to reposition their curatorial strategies to exhibit non-western

contemporary art. The generic term, biennale, is used for such survey exhibitions even

though some were actually three years apart, as with the Asia-Pacific Triennial or 5 years with

documenta in Germany.12

Biennales represent the forces of globalisation in the visual arts and by their very structure

that is, collecting art from different countries and showing it in one large exhibition, they

10 Kusumastuti, Y., 2003, Market Force and Contemporary Art Practice in Indonesia, Faculty of Law, Business and Art, Darwin, Northern Territory University (NTU), draft Masters thesis. Yuliana Kusumastuti cites a number of examples of art speculation. 11 See Carla Bianpoen, “Sad, tragic demise of the CP Biennale”, The Jakarta Post, 2005, November 17. 12 The name, documenta, is traditionally written in lower case.

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impose a ‘transnational standard of aesthetic practices, according to Yahya M. Madra.’

Madra, in writing about the Venice Biennale of 2005, considered the purposes of biennales.

She continued:

It is important to emphasize, however, that it is in and through these biennales that these “transnational standards” are being set…..Second, as they have become sites where the practice of the selected artists is valorized…they fulfill the economic role of the art market. Third, they contribute to the cultural “capital” of the city. 13

They have requirements beyond art, such as diplomatic and economic imperatives, in the

belief that art can grease lines of communication and give international status. The Venice

Biennale was established at the end of the 19th century to mark the unification of Italy and by

attracting tourists, fund restoration projects. A century later the Asia-Pacific Triennial was

part of Queensland’s attempt to participate in the Asian economic boom. As Melissa Chiu,

now Museum Director for the Asia Society in New York wrote, “It is no coincidence that

countries best represented in all three triennials, such as China, Japan and Korea, are

Australia’s major trading partners.”14

Biennale art needs to have an impact and engage the audience - it was not a form of exhibition

conducive to small gestures for, as Robert Storr, artistic director of the 2007 Venice Biennale,

said, small and subtle works generally tend to get lost.15. Spectacle was provided more

effectively by three-dimensional installations than by wall-mounted, two-dimensional

paintings. International curators were interested almost exclusively in artists working in

experimental media, which, according to Melissa Chiu again, “conformed to their own ideas

of progressive contemporary art”.16

Artists needed to be able to address the curatorial brief in their submissions and it helped

greatly if they could speak English and were free to travel, give talks and present their work to

international audiences. Not all Indonesian artists could do this: for some the international

exposure was just simply overwhelming, others needed to maintain the business that

supported their family or, if they were women, were under pressure to prioritise their family

13 Madra Yahya M., 2006, "From Imperialism to Transnational Capitalism: The Venice Biennale as a "Transitional Conjuncture", Rethinking Marxism, Vol. 18, (No. 4,) pp. 525 - 537. 14 Melissa Chiu, 2000 “Duplicitous Dialogue, The Asia-Pacific Triennial 1993 - 99”, Art AsiaPacific, no. 27, p. 25. See also the discussion by Neil Manton concerning the economic and diplomatic imperatives behind support for relations through the arts between Asia and Australia in Neil Manton, 2000, “The Arts of Diplomacy”, Artlink, Vol 20, No. 2, pp.24 - 25. 15 Robert Storr, American art historian, curator and art critic, in a talk given at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, July 17, 2005. 16 Melissa Chiu, “Asian Contemporary Art: An Introduction”, c. Oxford University Press, 2005, Grove Art Online, http://www.groveart.com/grove-owned/art/asiancontintro.html accessed 30/04/07.

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over their career. Those who did meet the biennale requirements entered another community,

that of the international travelling artist.

Biennales sought art which imparted an aura of its source and artists with ‘local colour’ or

identity. Nindityo Adipurnomo recognised this bias, commenting that overseas curators

“….try to evaluate what is ‘Indonesian’, so they’re looking for something exotic”.

In this photograph taken for the Fukuoka Asian Art Triennial in 2002, he becomes symbol of

Indonesia, his profile the mirror of the Wayang puppet figure in his backpack.

Curators mounting large survey exhibitions with Asian content sought equal representation of

gender and nationality, despite the questionable concept of nationhood in post colonial South

East Asia. When one Indonesian artist was required, invariably it would be Heri Dono and

when gender parity was required, Arahmaiani became the token Indonesian female as her

work raised gender issues familiar to international audiences even when she was the only

female artist in Indonesia to do so.

Curators favoured art with socio/political content because it reflected the national source of

the art and possibly because they themselves were sympathetic to the causes expressed.

Caroline Turner, who was Deputy Director of the Queensland Art Gallery, co-founder of the

Asia-Pacific Triennial Project and selector for Indonesian art, justified her preference, saying:

I would argue that much of the most interesting art that is coming out of these countries deals with issues that are very much connected to changes taking place in these societies.17

17 Caroline Turner interviewed by Jennifer Moran for Pandanus Books, Newsletter, Spring 2005, issue 6, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University, for the publication of Art and Social Change: Contemporary Art in Asia and the Pacific, edited by Caroline Turner.

Nindityo Adipurnomo photographed for the Fukuoka Asian Art Triennial 2002.

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Under her administration Dadang Christanto was selected for the Asia-Pacific Triennial /1 in

1993 and again in 1999 and Turner has continued supporting Dadang’s work by including

him in seminars and with the image of one of his works on the cover of Art and Social

Change, Contemporary Art in Asia and the Pacific a book she edited in 2005. The

installation depicted was titled 1001 Manusia Tanah/ Earth People, and involved figures

placed in the sea off Marina beach, Ancol, near Jakarta, in 1996, to represent the poor and

powerless who were evicted from the land for real estate developments. Dadang’s work has

been bought by the Queensland and New South Wales Art Galleries and the National Gallery

in Canberra and he now lives permanently in Australia, his career having been made by this

curatorial support and exhibiting in biennales.

There was a snowball effect in international exposure. Heri Dono was the first Indonesian

artist to gain international recognition in the 1990s, being selected for the exhibition Modern

Indonesian Art, Three Generations of Tradition and Change in America, for which Astri

Wright was a consultant curator. 18 Each step outside Indonesia contributed to his career,

raising his profile and compounding his value as an artist. Articles written about his work

assisted in his gaining overseas residencies beginning in Basel, Switzerland, then Oxford

U.K., a number of residencies in Australia, then Vermont, USA, Vancouver, Canada,

Singapore, and so on. The same curators selected the same artists. Hou Hanru the Chinese-

born, Paris-based independent curator, selected Heri Dono for the Cities on the Move

exhibition in 1997 and again for the Venice Biennale in 2002, making Heri the first

Indonesian artist invited to participate since Affandi in 1954. Stephanie Britton, writing in the

Artlink magazine in 2005 identified those who were most invited for biennales according to

the number of their ‘gigs’. Both Hou Hanru and Heri had 8 ‘gigs’, Heri having only one less

than the three most exhibited artists of all.19

Selectors were subject to constraints of time and finance on field trips and were lucky to have

three weeks in any one country, so they relied on the same curatorial networks. In Indonesia

that meant Jim Supangkat and the Cemeti Gallery, the individual and organisation that could

supply the art and artists that shared their aesthetic preferences. The artists produced a

reliable product for the international circuit and addressed issues about Indonesian politics

18 Astri Wright, Associate Professor of Southeast Asian Art at the University of Victoria in western Canada and author of Soul, spirit, and mountain: preoccupations of contemporary Indonesian painters, Kuala Lumpur, Oxford University Press, 1994. 19 Britton, S., 2005 "Biennials of the world: myths, facts and questions", Artlink (Australia), Vol. 25 no. 3, pp.34-37. The three most exhibited artists were Yang Fudong, Cai Guo-Qiang and William Kentridge.

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and culture that were of international interest. Nindityo Adipurnomo explored the meaning

and symbolism of the Javanese hairpiece or the Konde, traditionally worn as a status symbol

in Javanese society, and Mella Jaarsma worked with Jilbabs, the full covering dress like the

Islamic burkha. Dadang Christanto referenced the hidden history of violence and repression

under the Orde Baru and Arahmaiani raised gender issues in a patriarchal Islamic state. Heri

Dono referenced the incongruous structures of the regime with wit and satire in materials that

combined the traditional arts such as Wayang puppet figures with the detritus of modern

society. Most worked with installations that had impact and engaged the audience and which

could be packed and reconstituted in a succession of exhibitions. Heri Dono’s winged

figures, for example, have flown around the world, finally settling at Sherman Galleries in

Sydney in 2007 where they were bought by the National Gallery in Canberra.

The repeated selection of these artists obscured the work of other Indonesian artists that was

not selected. After 1993 the older generation of Modernist painters and the surrealist painters

from Yogyakarta were not selected for biennales, and traditional arts and crafts and print or

ceramics were rarely included. International selectors appeared to have a ‘criteria of

contemporaneity’ whereby it was acceptable for the individual’s practice to be informed by

tradition if it was distilled through a contemporary interpretation. Although the art

institutions were founded on the European art education model, particularly the Fine Arts

faculty at Institut Teknologi Bandung, and printmaking and ceramics had been taught since

their inception, work in these media was only selected when artists experimented outside

normal practice. Where gender was concerned, the repeated selection of Arahmaiani

obscured the fact that there were so few practising women artists in Indonesia. This is a

significant issue and reflects the expected roles for women in a Javanese and Islamic society.

Finally the art of youth and community groups that has long been a feature of Indonesian art

practise, rarely makes the transition from street to biennale and it is likely that the anarchic

energy of their projects would be lost in formal exhibition display. The activist group Taring

Padi, has never been selected for a biennale and Apotik Komik who began working together in

1997, has only been selected comparatively recently in 2004. These groups function outside

the established art outlets and network differently with youth groups in other countries.

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Biennales met the need of the Indonesian artists of the 1990s to find an outlet and an audience

for their work, but in soliciting a certain type of work, they produced a uniformity of product.

They provided international recognition for Indonesian contemporary art and an outlet for

issues that had been suppressed under the Suharto regime, but, limited to the work of these

few artists, it was not a true representation of Indonesian modern and contemporary art. After

the fall of Suharto the alternative art of the 1990s became mainstream and disillusionment

about effecting change set in. Dissent is now expressed by the youth collectives that bypass

the gallery system and the biennale gatekeepers – they have become the alternative to the

alternative in the Indonesian art world.