Book Launch - Living Art

Living Art: Indonesian artists engage politics, society and history

This book is inspired by the conviction of so many of Indonesia's Independence-era artists that there is continuing interaction between art and everyday life. In the 1970s, Sanento Yuliman, Indonesia's foremost art historian of the late twentieth century, further developed that concept, stating: 'New Indonesian Art cannot wholly be understood without locating it in the context of the larger framework of Indonesian society and culture' and the 'whole force of history'.

The essays in this book accept Yuliman's challenge to analyse the intellectual, sociopolitical and historical landscape that Indonesia's artists inhabited from the 1930s into the first decades of the new millennium, including their responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Extensively illustrated, Living Art contributes to the acknowledgement and analysis of the diversity of Indonesia's contemporary art and offers new insights into Indonesian art history, as well as the contemporary art histories of Southeast Asia and Asia more generally.

The book will be launched by H.E. Dr Siswo Pramono, Indonesian Ambassador for Australia and the Republic of Vanuatu.

Amrih Widodo will discuss the content of the book and Eve Warburton will chair this event. 

The event is followed by light refreshments.

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This book launch is co-hosted by the ANU Indonesia Institute and the Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia in Canberra.