Laurel MacLaren – Art in Indonesia has never been neutral; Indonesian artists have always sparked conversation and controversy.
This has been true from the openly socialist murals of Hendra Gunawan and Trubus in the 1950s, to FX Harsono's Paling Top installation of 1975 (consumer goods and political slogans parodying Soeharto-era development propaganda), through to the land-rights woodcuts of the Taring Padi collective after Reformasi (reformation).
But performance artists push even further, asking audiences to confront how Indonesian bodies endure history and violence. Collectives like Jatiwangi Art Factory bring farmers, musicians, and artists together in collaborative dialogues on land, labor, and future livelihoods.
I lived in Jakarta for much of the Reformasi era, and was an eager witness to the National Gallery of Art (GalNas) shaking off three decades of censorship to become a civic arena for the nation's collective memory.
The 2000 show Kebebasan yang Bertanggung Jawab (Freedom and Responsibility) featured artists FX Harsono, Dadang Christanto and Heri Dono, with artwork boldly confronting the 1965 massacres, corruption, and religious intolerance. Harsono's Burning Newspaper installation – charred stacks of papers and broken typewriters – became an emblem of freedom of the press, reborn.
Reformasi: Seni Pasca 1998 (Reformasi: Art Post-1998) was a 2003 exhibition featuring kinetic installations by Heri Dono, mocking military elites, and a haunting performance by Dadang Christanto using sacks of rice to symbolize the disappeared.
The vast show Manifesto Seni Rupa (Art Manifesto) in 2008 marked the 10th anniversary of Reformasi, and was a stock-take of art over a decade of democratic freedom. Showcasing the explosive creativity that had burst free since 1998, it was many visitors' first encounter with such overtly political art in a State museum.
Take, for example, Eko Nugroho's Hidden Violence. It featured hybrid robot-human figures with surveillance-camera eyes and comic-style speech bubbles spouting absurd slogans on security and democracy, implying that power now hides behind new disguises. Patchwork embroidery, made with women's sewing collectives in Yogyakarta, blurred the line between fine art and domestic craft – itself a political gesture. This exhibition cemented Nugroho's reputation and helped launch his thriving international career.
When I last visited the GalNas in 2023, the permanent exhibition impressed me with its ambitious sweep: tracing how art fueled freedom movements from Dutch colonisation through the early days of nation-building and eventual democratic reform.
So, on my recent return to Jakarta, I headed to the National Gallery with high expectations – only to be stunned by how openly the new installation echoes the revisionist histories Indonesian artists once fought to expose.
The permanent show was re-launched in July by Prabowo Subianto's Minister of Culture, Fadli Zon. It was obvious to me that, as a co-founder of President Prabowo's Gerindra party, Zon has clearly stamped politics onto curatorial choices, erasing chapters of history today's politicians would rather the public forget.
The opening galleries glow with nostalgia: Raden Saleh's 19th-century portraits, and landscapes from the first decades of independence. Then one arrives in the 1960s.
In 2023, a full gallery at GalNas highlighted the radical Lembaga Kebudajaan Rakjat (Lekra) movement, explaining how its artists lived with farmers, made posters for land-reform rallies, and used shadow-puppet theatre for political education. It also confronted the persecution of artists after the 1965-66 coup, with photos of imprisoned artists and text on state violence.
None of that survives today. Works by Affandi, Sudjojono, and Hendra Gunawan remain, but Lekra is now blandly described as merely 'depicting themes of class struggle.'
More shocking still, a wall text introducing the New Order section brazenly calls the Soeharto era one of 'individual freedom.' Anyone who lived through that period knows it was defined not by liberty but by censorship, surveillance, and suppression.
One of the museum's most famous pieces – Hardi's Presiden RI Tahun 2001: Suhardi (1979) – is still on display, and even offered for sale as a fridge magnet in the museum shop. In it, Hardi, dressed in military regalia with a chest full of medals, declares himself President in the year 2001. When the work was first shown in 1980, the artist was apprehended by Laksusda Jaya special forces, charged with treason, and detained for three days.
Hardi's painting is iconic, but you wouldn't know that from its display today. It is hung in a small side gallery, curiously displayed behind glass with a fierce glare. As with most pieces, its object label only includes artist, title and year.
More recent contemporary artists – once celebrated by the GalNas for their defiance and social commentary – have either been removed or stripped of their context. While every era through to Reformasi used to be framed with a placard about its historical significance, that context was missing from galleries featuring art from 1998 onwards. There was only a generic statement reminding viewers that artists are, at times, political. No kidding!
Hari Dono's Born and Freedom (2004) is still on display, its humans tethered to dogs chirping away. It is a piece that reflects on Indonesia's political climate in the Reformasi era, urging viewers to consider whether the end of Soeharto's regime really set anyone free – or are we still, absurdly, shackled like pets to our masters? Today's galley label for the piece has simply the artist's name and the artwork's title, as compared to the placards in 2023 that had paragraphs helping viewers consider the meaning of the piece.
Melati Suryodarmo's 24,901 Miles (2015) is squeezed into a hallway that most visitors glide through. Suryodarmo is an internationally renowned performance artist, who uses her body as a site of contestation. Her work features physical strain, repetition and discomfort to make visible the persistence of trauma, structural inequalities, and the labor of being human.
In the video piece on display, she artist trudges through red earth with only a familiar kapuk (cotton) mattress and a shovel as accompaniments. The mattress shifts between burden and refuge, her endless digging without purpose evoking the emotional labor around identity and belonging. As I stood watching her full piece, her work almost felt like a quiet rebuke of the exhibition itself, which erases the very struggles Melati's work embodies.
Towards the end of the permanent exhibition, Mella Jaarsma's The Fire Eaters (2011) is still on display, another powerful piece displayed without context. Jaarsma, a Dutch artist long based in Yogyakarta, co-founded Cemeti Art House in 1988. It was one of the country's first safe spaces for politically-charged art during an era of censorship, and it nurtured now-famous names like Eko Nugroho.
Mella's work has long been an important part of Indonesia's discourse on self/other and place/identity, and Cemeti a refuge for artistic expression. That history is simply erased.
Leaving the museum, I couldn't shake the feeling that Prabowo's government is attempting to control the cultural record as a way to rewrite the past. The take-home for lovers of Indonesian contemporary art is clear: if we don't defend the freedom of artistic expression, they won't just rewrite history – they'll script the future for us too.