Bandung Art Event
Aug-Sept. 2001

an on-site report

by Sue Ingham

Contemporary Indonesian art paints an interesting and complex picture. In the 1990s a new wave of contemporary Indonesian art sought to express the social and political environment from which it sprang and this meant it became part of the movement for Democracy and criticising the Suharto Regime. Suharto has now gone but no one knows what will happen next. Will Indonesia fall apart with separatist movements? How will the much-feared power of Military be used? Who will be president?

Just as with everyone else here, activist artists themselves are unsure. It is true that too many artists jumped on the bandwagon and therefore political art lost its credibility, but it is more than that. Many artists were deeply shocked by the riots that followed Suharto's downfall and they felt that although everyone is free to express an opinion, none of the deeper social concerns were being resolved.

In this environment a group of young art curator / writers in Bandung, West Java, decided to hold an art event which will eventually be on an international scale. Bandung is one of the most pleasant cities in Indonesia because it is four hours by train into the mountains from Jakarta and has a cool climate with tree-lined streets. It has a distinctive Sundanese cultural background in comparison to the other two major Javanese art centres, Jakarta and Yogyakarta in central Java. The Bandung Art Event is going to celebrate Bandung itself and although there will be artists from outside Bandung, this, the first B.A.E., will focus on the art of the city. In two year's time the BAE will be for Indonesia and by 2005 it is proposed that it will become an international event.

The organisers could hardly have chosen a more difficult time. The Rupiah has plummeted, there is little or no sponsorship and there are few international visitors to be seen in Indonesia, presumably frightened off by reports of demonstrations and riots. But the Bandung Art Event, which was to begin as a biennale of fine art, has grown into a month of theatre, performance, music, film, literature, Web art and a public program of workshops and debate. The biennale, as the word suggests, is modelled on the first and famous Venice Biennale. Like Venice, there is to be no one central exhibiting gallery but a number of spaces mounting their own exhibitions, albeit curated centrally. Some major artists who address issues of a social and political nature will be exhibiting, including Tisna Sanjaya and Isa Perkasa. Tisna's work has been exhibited in the internationally - recognised Asia Pacific Triennial in the Queensland Art Gallery, and he himself is a major figure in Bandung. He is a very popular teacher at the Institut Teknologi Bandung, or ITB, one of the 3 main art schools in Indonesia; a respected Islamic artist and a colourful character to boot. His brother-in-law Isa Perkasa has won Indonesia's major art prize, the Phillip Morris Art Award, and has been exhibited in America.

The BAE though is to represent all art activities in Bandung, so it will also address issues of advancing technology and the effects of globalisation through the work of new young artists. Finally the art of recognised Modernist masters from Bandung, such as Pirous and Srihardi, will also be shown.

It is a bold step initiated by Rizki Zaelani. He graduated with the Director of the BAE and the other curators some time ago from ITB as ceramic artists and together they now constitute the new young generation of curators in Indonesia. The Bandung Art Event will run for a month from August 18th and can be found on the Web at www.bae.or.id.