Reconnecting with the Urban Vernacular through Post-New Order Visual Art

Abstract

Abstract Indonesia’s urbanization and economic development projects during the New Order established regimes of visuality that ignored aspects of everyday urban life. Contemporary Indonesian artists attempt to share untold histories and stories of everyday life from the urban past or give expression to the social and creative challenges and opportunities of the urban present. This article focuses on multimedia artist Maryanto and new media art collective Ruang MES 56. Maryanto’s use of allegory and his notion of art as a ‘space of exception’ constitute thoughtful ways of engaging with the transformations of people’s urban environments and identities. MES 56’s work utilizes the critical and humorous potential of the ludic to deal with the new urban realities and possibilities under democratic reform. I argue that artistic exception does not exclude but in some ways strengthens, and in other ways contradicts, reconnection with the everyday realities of Indonesian urban life.