Recently, with the pandemic finally dying down, Jakarta has been teeming with events. Slowly but surely, we started to bring back public happenings, including concerts and art exhibitions—which is good news for me and Agung. After visiting our first exhibition in a couple years, we continued on to Jakarta Biennale 2021: ESOK for our anniversary last week. This year’s theme touches on current life issues while trying to shape the hope and meaning of ESOK (meaning tomorrow, but here symbolises the future) through various artwork. Agung used to visit Jakarta Biennale a lot during his uni years, but this was my first experience of the event.

Thrifted yellow dress // swapped black dress // hand-me-down jacket + purse // Mount Island mask // photos by Agung

The event itself is broken down into 3 venues—the National Museum, the National Awakening Museum (STOVIA) and Menteng Park. Last week we made plans to visit the one at the National Museum, but ended up going to Menteng Park as well. There are a total of 13 artwork being showcased at the museum—if I’m not mistaken, since we weren’t able to look at absolutely everything due to the time limit and being lost. A lot of them were really interesting, but some others were completely lost on us. We also see a lot more works by foreign artists, rather than local. I don’t know if this is how Jakarta Biennale usually is, but I feel a little let down. 

Afterwards, we sat down a little bit and discussed our experience. There are a few things we noticed. One, the wayfinding could be better—and, might I add, it would be nice to be given a brochure to best navigate the exhibition and read more about each work. It kind of sucked to miss out on 30%. of the exhibition, due to shitty directions—and now having almost no information on the works and what they might mean. Two, we notice the crowd at art exhibitions lately, which often clearly don’t care about the works themselves—they were simply there to use them as backdrops. Oh, how we miss the days when we could go to an exhibition and have it be almost completely empty!

thanks for reading

Recently, with the pandemic finally dying down, Jakarta has been teeming with events. Slowly but surely, we started to bring back public happenings, including concerts and art exhibitions—which is good news for me and Agung. After visiting our first exhibition in a couple years, we continued on to Jakarta Biennale 2021: ESOK for our anniversary last week. This year’s theme touches on current life issues while trying to shape the hope and meaning of ESOK (meaning tomorrow, but here symbolises the future) through various artwork. Agung used to visit Jakarta Biennale a lot during his uni years, but this was my first experience of the event.

Thrifted yellow dress // swapped black dress // hand-me-down jacket + purse // Mount Island mask // photos by Agung

The event itself is broken down into 3 venues—the National Museum, the National Awakening Museum (STOVIA) and Menteng Park. Last week we made plans to visit the one at the National Museum, but ended up going to Menteng Park as well. There are a total of 13 artwork being showcased at the museum—if I’m not mistaken, since we weren’t able to look at absolutely everything due to the time limit and being lost. A lot of them were really interesting, but some others were completely lost on us. We also see a lot more works by foreign artists, rather than local. I don’t know if this is how Jakarta Biennale usually is, but I feel a little let down. 

Afterwards, we sat down a little bit and discussed our experience. There are a few things we noticed. One, the wayfinding could be better—and, might I add, it would be nice to be given a brochure to best navigate the exhibition and read more about each work. It kind of sucked to miss out on 30%. of the exhibition, due to shitty directions—and now having almost no information on the works and what they might mean. Two, we notice the crowd at art exhibitions lately, which often clearly don’t care about the works themselves—they were simply there to use them as backdrops. Oh, how we miss the days when we could go to an exhibition and have it be almost completely empty!

thanks for reading