A HARBINGER OF THINGS TO COME
The first privately-run contemporary art museum in Jakarta adds to the strength of Southeast Asia’s art enthusiasm
The fifth floor of an office tower may seem an unusual choice of venue for Indonesia’s first museum of modern and contemporary art, but its geographical location puzzled local and regional art aficionados the most. “Art-initiated audiences flying to Indonesia don’t really come to Jakarta,” says Aaron Seeto, director of Museum MACAN. “Visitors usually head to Jogjakarta or Bandung,” the country’s two primary poles of artistic creation.
Defying odds, the privately-funded Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara (MACAN, the acronym also means “tiger” in Bahasa Indonesia) opened last November — coinciding with the 17th Jakarta Biennale — in a residential neighbourhood of the capital city.
While the project began under the impulse of Indonesian businessman Haryanto Adikoesoemo, whose personal collection includes more than 800 works of art by Indonesian and international artists, MACAN set itself up for an ambitious mission — that of improving public access to art and fostering art education.
“When a collector buys a work from a gallery or an auction house, chances are that you’ll never see that work again because it’s displayed in their private home,” says Fenessa Adikoesoemo, chairwoman of the Museum MACAN Foundation and daughter of the museum founder.
Among Southeast Asian nations, Indonesia has long been considered a thriving arts hub supported by patrons, with vibrant artist communities in Bandung and Jogjakarta as well as art fairs and biennales held regularly in Jakarta and Jogjakarta. Still, according to local observers, more permanent infrastructure and art institutions are lacking.
“What we’re hoping to change through MACAN, is the way the Indonesian audience can enjoy art on a daily basis,” Adikoesoemo adds. “On a weekend, instead of going to a shopping mall, families can learn something together.”
Museum MACAN is the latest of a number of private museums that have popped up across the region — in Thailand, there’s the MAIIAM Museum of Contemporary Art opened in 2016 in Chiang Mai, and the eightyear-old Museum of Contemporary Art on Vibhavadi-Rangsit Road — and displays curatorial standards on par with those of international institutions, offering rotating exhibitions, quality public programmes and research opportunities.
Its director Aaron Seeto — previously in charge of Asian and Pacific Art at the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane, Australia — sees MACAN’s 2,000m² space as an international museum located in Jakarta, servicing Indonesian audiences but also connected to a much broader global network.
“For the Indonesian public, seeing large, professional exhibitions can be a transformative experience, which will have cumulative effects over the years,” he says. While paying attention to the shows’ relevance to the local audience, the museum remains committed to pushing boundaries by presenting works that have never been displayed in Indonesia.
MACAN’s first exhibition, “Art Turns. World Turns. Exploring The Collection Of Museum MACAN”, focused on national identity and international influence in Indonesian art and history. One of the highlights was the paintings of Sindudarsono Sudjojono, a late, legendary Indonesian painter who portrayed island life and landscape in a modern, early-20th century style.
For its second show, which opened on May 12, the museum collaborated with the National Gallery Singapore and the Queensland Gallery on a large-scale Yayoi Kusama retrospective, “Yayoi Kusama: Life Is The Heart Of A Rainbow”.
Over the years, the Japanese artist famed for her colourful, dotted paintings, videos and art installations has become a popular sensation — to the point where a museum in Los Angeles was forced to introduce a “30-second selfie” rule last year, after visitors turned the exhibition into an Instagram backdrop.
While a Kusama exhibition is certainly an excellent public relations device for a new museum such as MACAN, the show provides deep insights into the artist’s early works, from her infinity net paintings to her lesser-known performances in 1960s New York.
With over 100 works on display, including photographs, sculptures, paintings and large-scale installations, visitors sample what it feels like to see the world through Kusama’s eyes. The trippy, psychedelic aesthetic of her works becomes dizzying over time while biographical elements regarding the artist’s World War II childhood and long-standing mental illness lend a darker reading to her works.
At the centre of the exhibition is a documentation room retracing her journey from Japan to the United States, at a time when politics as well as civil rights and anti-war movements were raging. The humanistic values and intervention-like modes of action she was exposed to between 1958-1972 are best reflected in her performance artworks — using her own body or others’, naked or painted with dots, as well as taking art out of the gallery and museum settings — yet continued to imbue her artistic practice in the next decades.
“Yayoi Kusama: Life Is The Heart Of A Rainbow” detaches the viewer’s gaze from oft-seen, caricatural depictions of her work, presenting her instead as an outsider both in Japan and in the US, a monument of 20th and 21st century art, having taken part in several artistic movements, as well as being a pioneer.
“In many ways, she is a feminist icon — in control of her body, in control of her relationships, in control of her money,” Seeto argues. “People only see the Kusama phenomenon and forget how groundbreaking she really is.”
The exhibition, which previously had been shown in Singapore and Australia, is a remarkable example of collaborations Southeast Asian institutions can offer to their audiences.
The Kusama show provides a benchmark for future exhibitions at MACAN, Seeto adds. “We’re testing what we can do with this space.”
Considering the magnitude of the project, Seeto concedes it’s not an exhibition that can be presented every four months. “Perhaps in a year, a year-and-a-half.”
Future exhibitions of similar magnitude won’t perhaps involve Kusama-like artists, he says.
“It could be an Indonesian artist. You can work with obscure artists in the most public way. It doesn’t have to be about their success or public visibility. It all comes down to how you develop the project and how you articulate it to the public.”
For the time being, Seeto remains committed to changing art conversations in Indonesia, through the museum’s support of mid-career artists — providing new opportunities for Indonesian art-practitioners who may not have had prior museum experiences — as well as giving audiences a taste of international artists.
“I’m also thinking about the ways in which we can organise further collaborations between Indonesia and the rest of the world,” he says. “We’re developing the infrastructure here in Indonesia but also circulating to Southeast Asia.”