Artists envision airport road lined with batik-motif murals

As the city authorities have embraced murals as a medium to spread messages, street artists are now painting batik motifs on the walls along the toll road connecting the city with Soekarno-Hatta International Airport.

“[Batik motifs] would be a way to welcome tourists to the city,” said a street artist who called himself Bopik Coret from Studio Corat Coret art studio recently.

His colleague, Bejo, said that he wished the city administration would accept the idea, “I wish they’d let me to do that”.

Over the decades, street artists have been widely misunderstood as vandals. Their paintings, adorning concrete walls all over Jakarta, have been dismissed as nothing more than cheap art and a form of hooliganism.

In the past three years, however, the city authorities have begun to see the hidden potentials of the street art in spreading social campaigns, ranging from suggestions of road safety to statements calling on the public to use formal Indonesian in daily conversation.
Street art: A motorcyclist drives past a mural reading “Jakarta 2011 Overpopulated” in Dukuh Atas, Central Jakarta. Both the Jakarta administration and the city police have commissioned street artists to draw murals that carry slogans on safe driving, pollution reduction and poverty eradication programs. JP/Wendra Ajistyatama

In a metropolis full of mega structures of muted colors, and where the air is saturated with dust and vehicles’ exhaust fumes, these paintings have become a sight for sore eyes.

Street art became widespread in Jakarta in 2001, when the first JakArt festival was held, Bopik said, referring to the revered art festival held annually in the capital city.

But it was in 2009 that government institutions started to use murals for their social campaigns on some flyover support columns.

Bopik recalled that in that year the city police contacted his studio to offer them a project to convey messages about road safety.

“I was completely thrilled! I thought, ‘Finally they caught my virus!’” Bopik said.

They accepted the city police’s proposal. Not long after, the National Education Ministry contacted them with an offer to create murals campaigning for a more widespread use of formal Bahasa Indonesia.

“Different from the city police’s project, which was spread all over Jakarta, the ministry’s project was focused on flyover columns on Jl. Ahmad Yani [in Central Jakarta],” Bejo said, adding that the projects were more of a social project than about money making.

“We never really think about the money, which is actually quite small given all the work we have to do to create the murals,” Bopik said.

He said that he often asked other art studios to join in the work. One such studio, Spiklala dan Garis-Keras, is based at Jakarta State University in East Jakarta and consists of art students from the university.

One member of the studio, who identified himself as Jin, said that it was a game-changing moment when they started working on projects with the city police and the education ministry.

“For instance, after that we received fewer problems from police officers and public order officers, even while we were working on our own projects that had nothing to do with the government,” Jin said. “It’s definitely a sign that, even though murals are still officially illegal in Jakarta, the administration is beginning to open their eyes to this kind of art,” he added.

Now, the artists have lost count of how many flyover columns they have painted. “There are hundreds of them,” Bejo said.

“I just hope the administration will legalize murals in Jakarta in the near future so that all the drab concrete walls in Jakarta can be painted with murals,” Jin added. (mim)