Symposium: ‘The Production and Circulation of Indonesian Modern Art’

Location: Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

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Article: ‘Fighting Colonial Claims to Power’

Agus Djaya and Otto Djaya in Amsterdam 1947-1950

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Exhibition: ‘The Djaya Brothers: Revolusi in the Stedelijk’

Location: Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

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Presentation: ‘The Exhibition as Indonesian Revolutionary Weapon’

Location: Courtauld Institute of Art, London.

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Interview with Amol K Patil: ‘About Sweep Walking’

Amol K Patil, Sweep Walking, 2015, installation detail. Collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
Amol K Patil, Sweep Walking, 2015, installation detail. Collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

The work Amol Kisan Patil contributed to the Kamarado exhibition finds its basis in his long-term research project about Indian middle class life. Like most of the middle class people in India, Patil grew up in a chawl; the 4-5 story houses that were built in Mumbai to host workers in the 1900s. The living conditions in the chawls are extremely tough and the stories about them reveal that a middle class income in India does not protect people from living under precarious conditions, with large numbers of people in small rooms vested with parasites, no running water, and open gutters between the houses. The people who live here are for instance employed as office clerks. Each day the clerk’s offices are cleaned by sweepers and for this part of his research project, Patil decided to become a sweeper. On first sight, Sweep Walking – which, as a work of art is grounded in the tradition of Indian performance art – looks playful and much more cheerful than one would expect.

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Exhibition: ‘Kamarado’

Sawangwongse Yawanghwe, Yawanghwe Office in Exile, 2015, SMBA.

Kamarado, a curatorial collaboration between Amsterdam and Bombay, brings together a diverse group of artists from various regions of the world. The conceptual core around which all these individual voices and artistic practices revolve is the idea of the comrade, a term that originally meant “one who shares the same room.”

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Exhibition: ‘Tromarama’

Location: Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

The members of Tromarama are among the generation of artists who first hand experienced the impact of the digital revolution in Indonesia during the early 2000s. The internet has not only shaped the way they think, but also how they work.

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Exhibition: ‘Made in Commons’

Wall sticker MiC

Made in Commons is a collaborative project of KUNCI Cultural Studies Center in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Ten artists and artist groups based in the Netherlands and Indonesia take part in this multimedia exhibition. Read more..

Curatorial Project: ‘1975’

Between 2010-2012, Jelle Bouwhuis and I co-curated Project 1975 for SMBA.

Project 1975 is a two-year programme exploring the relationship between contemporary art and colonialism. How do artists view the historic or contemporary acts of colonial powers? What role does visual culture play in today’s colonial practices? In the art world, what has come to replace the tacitly embraced multicultural normalization of the nineteen-nineties? In a programme spanning exhibitions, seminars and publications, SMBA focuses on these and other issues, and adds its voice to the globalisation debate.

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Exhibition: ‘In-between Things’

The title of the group exhibition “In-between Things” refers to some of the characteristics shared by the works on display, mostly sculptures, which combine various materials and practices. Moreover, these works share an interest in intercultural relations and their political imprints. Broadly speaking, ‘In-between Things’ addresses the theme of globalization and its relation to contemporary art. Read more..