24/07/2014
Installation Art for Cities and Their Thesis Exhibition
ICA Gallery, LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore (14-25 Feb 2014)
CITIES AND THESIS
Title: 'Jakarta: City of Threads’
Country: Indonesia
Design and Concept: Hanny Wijaya, Jacky Halim and Jane Jahja
This artwork represents a condition in Jakarta as the capital city and the centre of urban life in Indonesia. We create a 3-Dimensional Poster with the size 46x46 cm and we propose that the artwork will be presented both sides (front and back).
With this 3-D poster, we want to give a big picture about the condition of Jakarta in the eyes of local communities based on Politic, Economy and Social Life. We created the picture in both side to represent the condition of Jakarta in the past and in the present, that also can become ‘hope’ for the future.
Like the title, our concept of poster is using threads as our media. First, the back side is ’The Past’, this side will only show colourful threads without pattern falling down irregularly or disorganised, it will looks messy and chaotically like the condition of Jakarta before. Even though, in the past, Jakarta was controlled with the centralised system, however the fact that everything was really disorganised, without clear pattern to lead us to the future. This condition had created disappointment of Indonesian community, especially Jakarta’s resident and the climax of this condition was the riot in 1998. Afterwards, Indonesia had a reformation and people expect something more from the new leader, they kept leading Indonesia, especially Jakarta as the capital city into more disappointment.
Then this condition will lead us into the second side of the poster which represent ‘The Present’ and ‘hope’ for ‘The Future’. This side is showing the condition of Jakarta after the riot in 1998 until now and maybe onwards. We still used threads as the media and chose Cubist style (divided into different colours) to create an image of the present Governor or Mayor of Jakarta, ‘Joko Widodo’ or more popular with his nickname ‘Jokowi’. We chose him because in the present, he has become the phenomenon in Indonesia, especially Jakarta. People think that Jakarta is Jokowi and Jokowi is Jakarta. This is really interesting because after quite a long time people and developer are able to work together in a ‘healthy way’ with government to manifest an ‘ideal’ Jakarta as the capital city like it has to be from the first place.
For the style of this front side, we used Cubism to represent the condition of Jakarta in the present that has been developing into an urban city with ‘freedom,’ but not if we can see clearly, the ‘freedom’ is working for some blocks or groups of Capitalism that happened after the new era (orde baru). Therefore, we could see that Jakarta develop rapidly and it’s been led by some organisations. However, since the governor ‘Jokowi’ has become a positive icon of Jakarta. His way of leading and working has inspired people of Jakarta. He has a great image as a person who’s honest, hard-working, humble and caring. That is why people or communities in Jakarta put him as an icon to represent ‘hope’ and ‘goodness’ for the better future.
© pop-inc 2014
