VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

It’s good news for lovers of contemporary Indonesian art exhibitions. Starting October 6 until November 14, 2021, the XVI Biennale Jogja presents the theme ‘Indonesia with Oceania’. According to Director of the Biennale Jogja Foundation, Alia Swastika, Oceania is chosen because Oceania is an identity contestation space that attracts communities who live together to witness historical shifts and then rewrite their own history in the vortex of local politics, (post) colonialism and global relations. The XVI Biennale Jogja is expected to be a space for dialogue between artists and intellectuals from Indonesia and artists and intellectuals from Oceania. Both can learn from each other's experiences as ex-colonized societies whose existence has been defined for too long by the power of Western knowledge.

At the entire series of exhibitions and programs, the Jogja Biennale is held in four locations. Alia Swastika in a virtual press conference for the XVI Biennale Jogja 2021 said that this year's Biennale Jogja was special, as it marks a decade of the Biennale Jogja, the Equator series, which began in 2011. Thereby, an archive exhibition is also held and itt re-presents fragments of artifacts, and notes on the growth of the Yogyakarta Biennale Foundation in the arts ecosystem in Yogyakarta and in the global south. Interestingly, the works of artists from India to Brazil are presented virtually through the Minecraft game. This shows how this event responds to the relationship between art, knowledge, and digital technology as a part of historical speculation. With the ovid-19 pandemic condition that still limits crowds, exhibitions and most programs can be watched through the online portal https://biennalejogja.org/2021 and the social media accounts of Biennale Jogja.

Biennale Jogja is one of the main references in reviewing the development of Indonesian art. The history of art activities can be traced since its first implementation in Yogyakarta in 1988. For more than two decades, this series of exhibitions has had an impact on the emergence of works, artist figures and discourses that characterize the development of contemporary art in Indonesia and Yogyakarta in particular. Biennale Jogja is organized by the Biennale Jogja Foundation established on August 23, 2010. Its mission is to initiate and facilitate various efforts to obtain a strategic concept of urban planning based on arts and culture, and  refine the cultural blueprint of the future city as a fair and democratic shared living space.