Jakarta in Focus: Art Jakarta 2025 Unfolds Next Week

From international voices to local roots, the fair returns with scale, intimacy, and the pulse of Southeast Asia.

Jakarta is bracing for an art-soaked weekend. From 3–5 October 2025, Art Jakarta returns to JIExpo Kemayoran, and the city’s pulse is already quickening. Billed as Southeast Asia’s most anticipated art fair, this year’s edition arrives with fresh energy and the sense that Jakarta is no longer on the margins of the art world—it is at the center of a regional conversation.

Seventy-five galleries from 16 countries will land in Jakarta, carrying works that span cultures, mediums, and ideas. The roster is striking: Esther Schipper of Berlin and Paris brings its global edge, while Kaikai Kiki, the creative force founded by Takashi Murakami, injects the spirit of Japanese pop and subculture. From Taipei, Tina Keng Gallery joins, a respected voice that has long championed Chinese and Taiwanese artists on the world stage. Their presence signals what Artistic Director Enin Supriyanto has been building toward: recognition of Jakarta as a serious art hub, not just for Indonesia but for Asia.

Beyond the main floor, partnerships breathe life into the fair’s corners. Julius Baer’s lounge features Indonesian artist Eddie Hara, who splits his time between Basel and home, blending humor with critique. His new piece, CALL 911. DESTROY BAD ART, is bound to spark smiles and debate in equal measure. Bibit pairs finance with creativity by presenting Agus Suwage’s Self Portrait and the Theater Stage. Treasury continues its artist prize program, debuting “Reserve of Care” by young voices Azizi Al Majid and Nuri Fatimah, while BCA collaborates with Muklay and Palette Studio to reimagine the myBCA booth.

Other partners step in with equal vigor: SUPERMUSIC maps Indonesia’s music subcultures into the visual space, iForte Energi joins forces with Ricky Janitra for a technology-driven installation, and TACO hands its design materials to Jessica Soekidi in an exploration of light and form. CASA, evolving into DESIGN:JAKARTA, will transform the VIP Lounge into a curated haven. Even lifestyle names—Oasis, % Arabica, Artotel Group—add their own textures to the fair experience.

Core sections return, each sharpened: SPOT showcases ambitious installations from artists like Aditya Novali, Ardi Gunawan, and Ipeh Nur. SCENE brings 33 collectives from cities beyond Jakarta, proof that Indonesia’s art stories are richer when told from multiple coordinates. AJX looks outward with a Korea Focus, an Indonesian talent showcase curated under the theme Arus Baru (Rising Currents), and a Balinese presence via Natta-Cita Art Space from ISI Bali.

There’s also a glimpse ahead: Art Jakarta Papers 2026 (set for February) will make an appearance, spotlighting paper as a medium of resilience and experimentation in contemporary practice.

For now, though, all eyes are on next week. As the fair opens its doors, Jakarta becomes more than a host city—it becomes a stage where Southeast Asia’s art ecosystem gathers, debates, and celebrates.

Tickets are available now at artjakarta.com - For three days in October, expect Jakarta not just to show art, but to live it.

*Photography courtesy of Art Jakarta

Spotlights: Five Indonesian Artists at SPOT

If the fair is the heartbeat of Southeast Asia’s art scene, then Art Jakarta Spot is its slow inhale. A dedicated section for large-scale, site-specific projects, SPOT lets artists stretch their ideas into immersive statements. This year, five Indonesian artists step into that space, each turning personal memory and cultural history into material form.

i. ISA Art Gallery presents Ardi Gunawan

Performance Photography by Machiko Abe
luckily there’s no inside (with friendly ghost)
2025
Wood panel, acrylic on canvas, soft sculpture
Variable dimensions

With luckily there’s no inside (with friendly ghost), Ardi restages his own past works into a hybrid of performance and painting. A soft Dada gesture unfolds daily at 3 PM, where grotesque stand-ins mock the fatigue of cultural work and post-pandemic numbness. The “Friendly Ghost” series, meanwhile, collides fragments of pop culture with colonial imagery, hinting at collapse, memory, and recomposition.

ii. ara contemporary presents Ipeh Nur

Photography courtesy of Pinchuk Art Centre
The Waves Haven’t Slept
2024
Rock powder, charcoal, indigo paste, turmeric, egg shells on canvas and threads, carpet
single channel video 250 x 400 x 250, video duration 11 minutes 28 seconds

The Waves Haven’t Slept is a cavernous memory-scape woven from rock powder, indigo paste, turmeric, and thread. At its center lies Nyai Roro Kidul, the mythical Queen of the South Sea, whose legend shaped Javanese spirituality. Through material and video, Nur revisits the myth as a protective fortress, rooted in childhood memory yet alive with contemporary resonance.

iii. Rachel Gallery presents Endry Pragusta

Courtesy of Future Generation Art Prize

KELANA SERIES
2025
Resin, mix media
Variable dimensions

Endry’s Kelana Series reads like a diary of estrangement. Everyday objects lose their meaning, turning familiar life into something uncanny. Resin and mixed media become fragile bodies that mirror our collective disorientation. The works invite viewers not to retreat from emptiness but to face it, to keep walking, to imagine meaning anew.

 

iv. ROH presents Aditya Novali

Object Permanence (Intro)
2025
Stainless steel mirror, steel, teak wood
540 x 170 x 140 cm

Object Permanence (Intro) begins with a fragment: a wooden wardrobe inherited from his grandmother. From this object, Novali builds a vertical tower in wood, steel, and mirror. It becomes a monument to absence, weaving family histories, Chinese-Indonesian lineage, and the turbulent decades of Indonesian history into a body that both preserves and conceals.

v. SANHKARA Art presents Adi Gunawan

STOLEN MUSE
2025
124 x 172 x 76 cm
Fibre

In Stolen Muse, the Mona Lisa refuses to remain frozen. She is carried, spirited away into a new context, mischievous and restless. By reimagining the world’s most famous muse, Gunawan plays with the fragility of art history itself—what happens when icons are no longer still but in motion? It is both affectionate and daring, a wink at the permanence we assume art must hold.

As Art Jakarta 2025 prepares to open, SPOT reminds us that contemporary art is not only about objects on walls—it’s about memory, myth, collapse, and reinvention. In these works, Indonesia’s artistic voices are not just participating in the global conversation. They are leading it, reshaping what art can mean here and now.

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*Musotrees is delighted to be part of Art Jakarta 2025 as a media partner.