Gets to the heart of what is unique about Indonesian art. Exploring the work of established and emerging artists in Indonesia's vibrant art world, this book examines why so many artists in the world's largest archipelagic nation choose to work directly with people in their art practices. While the social dimension of Indonesian art makes it distinctive in the globalized world of contemporary art, Elly Kent is the first to explore this engagement in Indonesian terms. What are the historical, political, and social conditions that lie beneath these polyvalent practices? How do formal and informal institutions, communities, and artist-run initiatives contribute to the practices and discourses behind socially engaged art in Indonesia? Drawing on interviews with artists, translations of archival material, visual analyses, and participation in artists' projects, this book presents a unique, interdisciplinary examination of ideologies of art in Indonesia.

Indonesia is one of the coutnries where exciting art is still waiting to be discovered. Over the past ten years, a growing number of group exhibitions and survey shows have presented Indonesian art. What has been sorely lacking is a book about the country's best-known artists. "Sip!--Indonesian Art Today" introduces readers to 16 established and young artists, presenting each of them with recent works. Farah Wardani, director of the Indonesian Visual Art Archive, Yogyakarta, has compiled brief texts shedding light on the artist's conceptions. Biographical information, exhibition histories, bibliographies, and portraits of the artists complement the illustrations. The curator Enin Supriyanto, a leading expert on the Indonesian art scene, has contributed an essay examinging the most recent developments in Indonesian art, tying them back to the art history of the past forty years and mapping them to the transformations in Indonesian society and politics during the same period. A timeline extending from the 1970s to the present additionally visualizes the most important moments in art, in Indonesia and abroad, making the book an indispensable compendium for collectors and curators, students of art and everyone who is interested.

This book provides the first comprehensive study of feminisms and contemporary arts in Indonesia. While Indonesian contemporary arts are currently on the rise in the global art scene, no in-depth study has been done on the works of Indonesian women artists and the feminist strategies they employ when operating within the Indonesian art world. Focusing on Arahmaiani, Titarubi, and IGAK Murniasih amongst others, this pioneering work uses feminist reading to analyse the works of Indonesian women artists historically and today. It also illuminates the sociocultural and political contexts in which the artists worked and a nuanced understanding of local feminisms in Indonesia. These artists achieve this in feminist terms by orienting their works towards the production of positive images of the female body, expression of female desire, and adherence to certain universal principles such as erotic appeal and inclusiveness in attempting to formulate or convey a conceptual ideal.

"Art Of Indonesia" presents the treasures of Indonesia's National Museum to the world, covering a representative selection from prehistoric, classic, Islamic, and colonial periods.

Art as Politics explores the intersection of art, identity politics, and tourism in Sulawesi, Indonesia. Based on long-term ethnographic research from the 1980s to the present, the book offers a nuanced portrayal of the Sa’dan Toraja, a predominantly Christian minority group in the world’s most populous Muslim country. Celebrated in anthropological and tourism literatures for their spectacular traditional houses, sculpted effigies of the dead, and pageantry-filled funeral rituals, the Toraja have entered an era of accelerated engagement with the global economy marked by on-going struggles over identity, religion, and social relations. In her engaging account, Kathleen Adams chronicles how various Toraja individuals and groups have drawn upon artistically-embellished "traditional" objects—as well as monumental displays, museums, UNESCO ideas about "word heritage," and the World Wide Web—to shore up or realign aspects of a cultural heritage perceived to be under threat. She also considers how outsiders—be they tourists, art collectors, members of rival ethnic groups, or government officials—have appropriated and reframed Toraja art objects for their own purposes. Her account illustrates how art can serve as a catalyst in identity politics, especially in the context of tourism and social upheaval. Ultimately, this insightful work prompts readers to rethink persistent and pernicious popular assumptions—that tourism invariably brings a loss of agency to local communities or that tourist art is a compromised form of expression. Art as Politics promises to be a favorite with students and scholars of anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, ethnic relations, art, and Asian studies.