On Tradition: Contemporary Art from Indonesia

Presenting 13 artists and collectives working with traditional art practices in contemporary contexts—both those with contemporary practices that draw on tradition, and those bringing traditional practices into the contemporary art world. While the contemporary and the traditional have often been seen as binaries when looking at Indonesian art, On Tradition seeks to explore the crossovers and new forms which are developing across the archipelago. Alongside artists working in Java and Bali, the exhibition features an equal number from outlying areas such as Sumba, North Maluku, West Timor, North Sumatra, Kalimantan and West Papua. Working in a variety of media, the artists address the pressing issues of our time—gender justice, ecological threat, maintenance of culture and systematic inequality—through engagement with traditional art practices. Whether with criticality, nostalgia, documentary precision or whole-hearted embrace, the works in On Tradition show that artists’ relationships with tradition are not a straight line from the past to the future, but a vibrant cycle of perpetual reimagining.