As one of the cultural partners at ART SG 2023 in Singapore, the presentation by Museum MACAN highlights the role of museums in supporting artistic research in Indonesia. The artworks included in this presentation are a work in progress by three emerging Indonesian artists: Aliansyah Caniago, Ika Arista, and Rizki Lazuardi. This research and artwork production have been developed through a creative commission project organized by Museum MACAN and British Council Indonesia in 2022, where each artist has responded to issues explored in the recent G20, namely global health architecture, digital economy transformation, and energy transition.

Aliansyah Caniago’s All Seems New Under the Sun project chronicles his expeditions to Barus, North Sumatra, in which he engaged in discussions with local communities as part of his extensive research in the colonial legacy of camphor trees and how it affects ecological problems in the present day. Whereas the lack of access to health facilities during the pandemic has prompted Ika Arista to initiate her Keris Panangko project, which reexamines keris daggers beyond its mythical understanding. Rizki Lazuardi presents Perpetual Bull, a way to narrate the future through the speculative markets of renewable energies that can be measured and commodified.

As each artist continues their artistic investigation, this commission project aims to expand the role of art museums and cultural institutions in contributing to long-term research and facilitating dialogues between artists, experts, and local communities. Exploring various approaches of contemporary art practices to provide critical reading, reflections, and speculations as alternative perspectives to achieve a dynamic, interdisciplinary and inclusive art scene.

ART SG | 12–15 January 2023

at Marina Bay Sands Expo & Convention Centre, Singapore. Click here to book your tickets!

Aliansyah Caniago

Aliansyah Caniago (b. 1987) currently divides his time between Bandung and Barus, Indonesia, and London, UK. A graduate of Painting from the Bandung Institute of Technology, Caniago currently studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. Through site-specific interventions, installations and durational performances, he is interested in working directly with communities and developing artworks that could blend-in with the society, entering conflicted areas creatively and trying to repair the damaged environment. Questions of identity and environment, tradition and modernity have been at the core of his work. The notion of ‘landscape’ has played an important role in his practice and he engaged with it in different ways. In several performances, he explored our close bodily connection with the landscape, how we can blend in or stand out, how we become part of the environment or an extension of it.

Ika Arista

Ika Arista (b. 1990) is a native of Aeng Tong Tong, Sumenep, Indonesia. Her interest in the cultural heritage of traditional weapons such as keris and badik daggers, as well as the tombak spears has been inherited from a long line of generations. In a world that remains dominated by male and regarded masculine, Ika is one of the very few female empu (expert keris-maker) and she believes that keris as a Nusantara heritage remains relevant today, especially for the younger generation. Her research and exploration into the contemporaneity of keris seeks to expand the heritage beyond its occult traditions, but into its materials sciences and function in modern-day health practices in the villages of Aeng Tong Tong. 

Rizki Lazuardi

Rizki Lazuardi (b. 1982) is an Indonesian artist and curator who works mainly with moving images and expanded cinema. He obtained his MA in film and media art at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg. Central to his practice is subjects related to institutionalized information. His works and programs have been presented in many festivals, exhibitions, or institutions, among others IFFR Rotterdam, Yokohama Triennale, OK Video Jakarta, European Media Art Festival Osnabrück, Image Forum Tokyo, and YCAM Yamaguchi. In 2019, he was commissioned to conduct artistic research on the colonial-related film archives at the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, Hilversum. Lazuardi is a program consultant for Arsenal Berlin for the Asian films selection of the Berlinale Forum 2021.

Lazuardi is one third of Indeks.