The latest edition of the Yogyakarta biennial explores ‘Titen’, a Javanese word for the art (or science?) of reading nature’s signs in order to predict natural disasters
Biennale Jogja 17 is spread out over 14 spaces, with major exhibition sites, including village halls, a waste disposal centre and farmland, located around two villages outside of central Yogyakarta, most of which have no climate-controlled rooms. Navigating this, to put it mildly, is a demanding experience (though I speak as a writer from Singapore, the ‘air-conditioned nation’.) On the flipside, the lack of those rarefied comfort-zones of art viewing to which someone like me has become used prioritises bodily modes of knowledge and experience – what can be seen, smelled, heard and felt. At times, though, it’s only the effect of heat on your body that you can feel.
To get to this biennial’s more remote locations, we travel in style: a kereta kelinci (‘rabbit train’), a rickety open-air tram typically used for children’s parties. Hopping on and off, we check out artworks scattered around Bangunjiwo, on the outskirts of Yogyakarta. So far I’ve seen a huge outdoor installation with baskets (Dan Vezentan’s The Rice Collector, 2023) and a restored Javanese house inside which Serbian architect Jelica Jovanović is slapping around some grey paste in a pail. Next, there’s an aerobics performance by village women playing out to an infectious pop song. Written and composed by Arum Dayu in collaboration with these women, it is also the biennial’s earworm of a theme song (Nguri-uri Lemah, whose opening lines translate as ‘Taking care of the land, taking care of the earth’), which will subsequently be played at several official events. After that it’s on to the Bibis Monument, a building originally used by Suharto as his headquarters while fighting Dutch colonial forces (1948–49) and expanded during his brutal New Order dictatorship (1967–98) into a museum celebrating himself. Now it has fallen into disrepair. One of the artworks, After Museum, After History (2023) by Unhistoried, artist-researcher duo Arif Furqan and Reza Kutjh, is a haunting installation bringing together the items – kitchen utensils, table and chairs, a helmet, an old radio, a bicycle – Suharto and his soldiers used into one room and covering them with a thin white cloth. Half-hidden, the objects seem somewhat more… malevolent? At that point there’s a small commotion outside: one of the visitors has sunstroke and is calling a taxi back to the hotel.
This edition of the Biennale Jogja has the theme of Titen, a Javanese word for the art (or science?) of reading nature’s signs in order to predict natural disasters. This chimes with the event’s overarching goal to explore forms of knowledge othered by Western methodologies.
Another continuous thread of the biennial is the established strategy of forging south-to-south alliances to explore affinities and common strategies of artmaking, activism and community-building. Since 2011, Biennale Jogja’s Equator Project had committed to collaborating with another country located between latitudes 23° N to 23° S, over five editions. In 2023 the project’s definition has moved away from that strict form of geography to mean ‘a point of departure and common platform for “re-reading” the world’, with Eastern Europe and South Asia coming under the spotlight. Despite the former not being part of the Global South, the curators attempt to draw affinities between postsocialist and postcolonial contexts.
Just as this comparison has a tendency to feel more or less of a stretch through the course of the biennial, the show as a whole inspires both hope and melancholy. It is filled with inspiring social collectives who operate on the principles of resource-building: from Romania there is an ‘Experimental Station for Research on Art and Life’; from Kathmandu an LGBTQ safe space called the Dankini-Resting Room, set up by Untamable Dankini like a cosy reading room with texts and materials from the actual space; from Jakarta a research group exclusively studying Indonesian women writers called Ruang Perempuan dan Tulisan; to name but a few.
There is a strong presence of feminist voices – whether they are based on intellectual exchange or shared physical labour, fighting the patriarchy or capitalist land-grabbers. Especially moving among them is Fitri DK’s collaboration with a coalition of women from Wadas, a village in central Java, which is opposing ecologically devastating mining operations in the locality. The mixed-media installation, Wadas Lestari (2023), incorporates various elements of the villagers’ ongoing protests. For example, Fitri created a piece of hanging tapestry woven from stagen cloth, fabric strips that are traditionally worn around the waist as corsets. According to the wall text, the women in Wadas have wrapped these cloths around trees as a symbol of protection and to dissuade loggers from chopping them down. Next to the tapestry are batik paintings depicting women weaving – a source of livelihood and an innocuous-seeming activity they perform at the village entrance while they watch out for intruders. Printed on one of these batiks is the villagers’ motto: tanah adalah daging, air adalah darah, batu adalah tulang (‘Soil is flesh, water is blood, rock is bone’).
But as much as such practices are highlighted, the exhibition is also clear-eyed about the forces such groups are resisting. In Mekh Limbu’s video essay, Mangdem’ma: an invocation for the healing of Adivasi spirits and lands (2022), the mesmerising chants of the scripture of the Yakthung people in Nepal are called upon to repair intergenerational traumas of cultural fragmentation and displacement. But it is a prayer of the broken. The video explores the plight of the Nepali diaspora working as low-wage migrant workers abroad and features protest rallies for Indigenous land rights. Also included are shamanic rituals that culminate in a long invocation for strength and wisdom, among which lines are: “Hey my grandmother God! Give wisdom and knowledge to fight with colonialism, globalisation, capitalism, Brahminism, casteism, sexism, classism, becoming as lightning and earthquake, punish those who encroached and did injustice to the earth.” To that, I add a wistful “Amen”.
Titen: Embodied Knowledges, Shifting Grounds, Various venues, Yogyakarta, 6 October – 25 November
