OCT 6
NOV 25
The 17th edition of the Jogja Biennale—titled “Titen: Embodied Knowledge, Shifting Grounds”—saw curators Eka Putra Nggalu, (2023) featured a canopy covered in dry tobacco leaves, a subsistence crop that fuels a (clove cigarette) industry that has remained pivotal to Indonesia’s economy since the colonial era. Meanwhile, Indonesian artist Jompet Kuswidananto recalled a childhood ghost story in (2011), an installation of six spectral, deconstructed “figures” that recall the Javanese Royal Army formed after the Java War (1825–30) when the Dutch took control of the kingdom. In the words of the biennale’s director, Alia Swastika, these works were “forms of resistance against transformation and land grabbing, resource capitalization, and the loss of local wisdom.”
