Southeast Asia’s biggest art markets: Same-same but different

Welcome to the Indonesian edition of that tantalizing creature, the Southeast Asian art fair. Art Jakarta has chosen for itself an October date— getting a jump ahead of Singapore (in January) and Manila (a month later.)

In any three of this region’s capitals, the plumage of the wonderfully eccentric art crowd are not so much different from one city to another. There are the ministers’ and datuks’ third or fourth wives, with white-gloved bodyguards carrying the requisite Hermès Birkins reverentially, the avid Yayoi Kusama fans, signalling their good taste with pumpkin-splashed hairbands and ballet slippers, the curators in head-to-toe Issey Miyake (Pleats Please), the art advisers and managers in Thom Browne, and of course, the gallerists in LV or Balenciaga, carefully dressed so as not to eclipse their clientele, even in the cleavage department. There are the famous dilettantes, local actors and supermodels, and the grandchildren of property moguls, dressed in expensive normcore. In between are the serious collectors in protective Uniqlo camouflage, who only hint at their net worth by the vintage Pateks and dazzling Richard Milles on their wrists. This year, Golden Goose Superstars and New Balance sneakers have been traded in for On Cloud, give or take a Loewe collab.

Of the three, Art Jakarta looms as the most sprawling, taking up three halls at the Jakarta International Expo, built on the grounds of the old airport. The temple-like area rises to an impossible height, the better to create the suitable backdrop for the scale and height of contemporary art. Seventy-three galleries fill the space—about half of them from the neighboring countries, the Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia, South Korea, Vietnam, Taipei, and even as far afield as Putin’s Russia.

To give some idea of the competition, Art Fair Philippines this year had 60 galleries; while Art SG had 116, on the same footing as Frieze Seoul, which had 112 under its belt.

It’s a dizzying array that will take at least three days of dutiful inspection to completely suss out. “The collectors never make up their minds on the first day anyway,” says the managing director of one of the top Indonesian galleries. “They say, ‘Reserve this’ and ‘Reserve that,’ but they really make up their minds only on the last day!” (That’s a reassuringly far cry from Manila collectors who constantly whine that the best treasures have been snapped up days before Art Fair Philippines opens its doors.)

Indonesia and the Philippines are neck-to-neck for the crown of SEA’s biggest art market, harking back, one supposes, to the days when they were joined as one as part of the glorious Majapahit Empire—a territory that stretched from Java to New Guinea. (The over-educated driver of the black Alphard that ferries me around town grins pridefully at the mention of ‘Majapahit.’ I think to myself that he must have learned it from the same Gregorio Zaide textbook before history was taken out of our grade school classrooms.)

The truth is that Indonesia and the Philippines may also be counted as the two countries with the most ancient histories—Singapore and Malaysia reckon its beginnings, after all, only from the 1960s. In contrast, both Indonesia and the Philippines suffered from centuries of brutal colonial rule, under the Dutch and the Spanish empires, respectively. The thin (albeit silver) lining, however, was that both countries have a cinematic, irreplaceable past and a highly-developed Western sensibility in their art, architecture, and literature. None of that is apparent these days in either Jakarta and Manila, which were bombed, gutted and then bulldozed to create rather anonymous but similar-looking concrete and glass skyscrapers. The millennium’s template seems to be create pseudo-Singapores, which is a mistake, since in the process, both capitals throw out what makes them, in fact, unique in all of Asia.

Manila’s history, its walled city of Intramuros, graceful 19th-century mansions, and the world’s oldest Chinatown, now teeter on the edge of reclamation and extinction. Jakarta’s old “Batavia” district, with gabled stone houses straight out of the Amsterdam canals, is likewise hemmed in by gritty street markets, reduced to a single, rather sad square.

The art fairs in both cities, however, tell a different story, where there is an explosion of creativity and a certain sophistication that would not go amiss in London, Paris or New York. It’s a dizzying disconnect. (Alas, the Jakarta Historical Museum is unreachable that weekend to provide further context because of a big birthday parade for the military on Merdaka Square.)

Joined at the hip through a shared history and heritage, it is obvious at the fair that Manila and Jakarta have art (and artists) that have cross-pollinated. At the three-day event, there are exemplars of many of the Filipino contemporary greats (and a few ultra-contempos) that overlap with Indonesia’s similar aesthetics.

As is the practice in both capitals, politics is coyly kept at bay in these elite strongholds. Jakarta is currently wracked by the pushback from a certain former president’s dynastic impulses. (A familiar regional ailment.) One artist slyly worked into the foot of his sculpture the letter of his dismissal from a government university for his radical beliefs. (Call it by its Manila term: “red-tagging.”) The horrors of climate change are a safe topic in both countries, however, and artists from every shore are united against this common enemy. Indeed, giant, tangled fishnets dredging up the flotsam and jetsam of the abused ocean are themes on repeat throughout the fair and the Jakarta Biennale also happening at the same time.

The most tantalizing works are those that express the hybridity that preoccupy both Filipinos and Indonesians. There is Toshiyuki Shibakawa (YOD Gallery, Osaka - Tokyo) reimagining a modern Pompeii with grizzled artifacts to be discovered in the 40th century, of rusted kewpie dolls and waving cats, but also decaying fliptop cellphones and Swatch watches. Also familiar and fascinating was Marcelo Suaznabar (Gallery Theo, Seoul) with a series of sloe-eyed, sleepy creatures that included three-eyed monsters and whiskered octopuses, the sweet but nightmarish visions that only a Bolivian transplanted to Korea could have. Yohei Yama (Vin Gallery, Vietnam) embodies the nomadic Asian artist, born in Japan but presently based in Ho Chi Minh, a constant traveler to Van Gogh’s Arles, who these days glories in abstract expressionist crop circles.

Of course, with the unsaid intention of restoring the Majapahit realm to its former glory, 35 journalists from Australia and New Zealand, correspondents for London and Parisian media, Bangkok, Manila, Taiwan, Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur, Shanghai, Seoul, and Singapore had been flown in to partake, flashmob-style, of this art experience.

And lest we forget, this Southeast Asian kingdom was also the center of the Spice Trade that bewitched not just the Dutch but also Ferdinand Magellan who, seeking a roundabout way to it, found himself and his destiny, both glorious and dark, in the Philippines. As a reminder of the pecuniary nature of these old pursuits, Art Jakarta outdid itself with inventive partnerships with big banks and bitcoin—today’s equivalent of frankincense and myrrh, cloves, and nutmeg that haunted the aristocrats of the past as much as painting and sculpture ever did.