The people of Indonesia & their culture, politics, economy and environment - Inside Indonesia: The peoples and cultures of Indonesia

Visual Arts

Review: Indonesia Calling 2020

#EroticArt: Agency, advocacy and women’s sexuality

Art and activism combine to drive the discourse about female sexuality on Instagram

Bicara tentang seksualitas perempuan lewat #eroticart di Instagram

Review: Landscape of the soul

An exhibition of wall-hangings and mixed-media depicts the experiences of European Dutch and Eurasian people in Indonesia during the Japanese Occupation, the Revolution and after

Encountering Indonesia at AsiaTOPA (Part 2)

Reflections on contemporary Indonesia and Australia-Indonesia relations at the AsiaTOPA festival

Review: Hope and despair in Aceh

Contemporary Indonesian painter Mahdi Abdullah exhibits Acehnese culture in Melbourne

The pattern of a batik revival

How UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage program transformed the batik neighbourhood of Laweyan

T-shirt cosmopolitanism

Popular forms of writing in public reveal the richness of Balinese revitalisation

The Mahabharata in comics

Reincarnations of works by the great Indonesian comic artists challenge manga’s dominance

Design and architecture in Indonesia

Alexandra Crosby The role of design in social change has received increasing public attention in the last decade. User-centred, iterative, participatory flexible approaches to the design of objects, spaces, communications, services and experiences are valued by policy makers and firms all over the world to address issues of social justice, sustainability and urban development. Simultaneously the territory within which design operates has been changing. Design is sometimes used synonymously with consumerism, urban tastes, and globalisation, such as ‘designer handbags’, but what design is and what it does is much more complex, and many of these new definitions of design are emerging in Indonesia.

Chinese whispers: The art of reflection

Essays and Fiction is a new series of writing in Inside Indonesia that aims to give voice to more personal stories about Indonesia. We welcome submissions in the form of reflective pieces, fiction, artwork, or essays about travel and fieldwork experiences.

Amri Yahya and the Sydney University Labor Club

A link to Australia’s support of the Indonesian revolution

Defining the Nation?

Indonesia at the Venice Biennale, 2013

Everything is allowed

The generation of artists rising after Reformasi is failing to create meaning outside the art market

Preserving landscapes

Budi Brahmantyo continues a lineage of scientific art for which West Java’s natural resources have provided the subject

Herstory in art

Titarubi’s art challenges masculinity in Indonesian visual arts and beyond

Reflections of the soul

Art critics welcome exhibition of edgy works on Islamic themes

Review: Khadir Supartini’s 'Journey'

A bold young painter signals new direction in Indonesian fine art

Art for the people

Taring Padi takes stock of a more than a decade fighting the political establishment – with art as its weapon

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Lontar Modern Indonesia

A selection of stories from the Indonesian classics and modern writers, periodically published free for Inside Indonesia readers, courtesy of Lontar.