The radical new wave of Indonesian activist-artists hitting our shores

Driven by a powerhouse of local collectors and a bold new generation of talent, a high-voltage cultural exchange is rewriting the map of contemporary art. AdvertisementVisual artThe radical new wave of Indonesian activist-artists hitting our shoresBy Jenna PriceFebruary 19, 2026SaveYou have reached your maximum number of saved items.Remove items from your saved list to add more.ShareAAAThe artist’s studio is crammed with work – charcoal drawings, acrylic paintings, large and small, works hanging above each other, leaning one on top of another. We are 150 kilometres from Jakarta, in Bandung. The place is heaving: teenagers working on a water-recycling project in the yard, university students gesticulating in front of bold anti-corruption drawings and etchings, local folks just dropping in for a visit, other artists. Folks like me, knees creaking, recruited into planting small seedlings in dark brown earth during what was supposed to be a regular artist’s talk. Kids everywhere. Happy noisy bedlam.This is the life’s work of Tisna Sanjaya, venerated Indonesian artist and activist over decades. Now he’s bringing his bravely political paintings and performances to Australia for his first-ever solo show, Cultural Amnesia, at Jo Holder’s The Cross Art Projects in Sydney. He’s not the only Indonesian artist on show. This week, his son Zico Albaiquni, is onto his fourth solo exhibition, The Land that Refuses to be Beautiful, with Ames Yavuz.Indonesian artist and activist Tisna Sanjaya at work.There’s an enthusiastic army of people raising the profile of Indonesian art and artists in Australia. Academics, historians, the artists themselves and even a reformed lawyer who buys and sells service stations. Our consciousness of Indonesian artists is growing – just as our politicians say today that the two countries are so important to each other.Other Indonesian artists are also joining the rosters of galleries across the country: Faisal Habibi at Redbase Gallery in Sydney, Dadang Christanto at Gallerysmith in Melbourne, Arwin Hidayat at Mitchell Fine Art in Brisbane, Jumaadi, after a string of institutional shows, at King On William in Sydney.But Tisna, as he is always known, was the first, back in 1999 when legendary curator and author Julie Ewington worked with him in the Third Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art. She loved his work. “He’s always been committed to political questioning, coupled with spiritual renewal. He’s a devout Muslim in pursuit of social justice. It’s a robust and courageous practice,” she says. Plus he took, head-on the corruption of politicians in Indonesia back then.AdvertisementHe still does. He wants to change the political landscape through his work, to get people engaged with what’s happening to the climate and the land in his much-loved Indonesia. That’s where the water purification plant and the seedings contribute. The purification plant works. The plants grow and provide fruit and vegetables, although recruiting random people as horticulturalists could be risky.“Mother Earth is part of your humanity, your homeland. This land, this water, that is what makes you Indonesian,” says Chaitanya Sambrani, associate professor in art history at the Australian National University ANU. In Indonesian culture, the earth is sentient. You better look after it.But what I saw that day was no one-off performance for tourists. Elly Kent, academic at the ANU specialising in Indonesian studies, deputy director of languages and author of Artists and the People: Ideologies of Art in Indonesia, says there is an intense connection between artists in Indonesia and their social contexts.Tisna Sanjaya was one of the first Indonesian artists to join the rosters of galleries across Australia.Tisna set up his studio and gallery in Cigondewah, part of Bandung which was agrarian when he was a child. Since then, it’s been industrialised and polluted, textile factories dumping waste (thanks for nothing, Australia). Plastic factories doing the same. That dumped waste turned the river black, poisoned the well.And those water purification plants with spinning wheels, they were a way of engaging the community in work for everyone. Plus it’s not just earnest work: pigeon-racing, martial arts, children playing instruments in the yard. In the background, Tisna engages with academics, politicians, business, the local community.“He sets his sights on a political issue he wants to address and sets up a campaign in which all of these different people contribute. It’s visible and obvious – and he engages really closely with these different parts of society,” Kent says.AdvertisementTisna, she says, is an excellent example of a very striking tendency in Indonesian art – that relationship between artists and their communities.Plus, artists move back and forth, crossing borders, bringing intellectual and cultural goodies with them. She reminds us of the Macassan traders, who visited northern Australia, trading trepang (sea cucumbers) with the Yolŋu people since at least 1700. There was more than a food connection. There are images of the trading boats from either side of the voyage,