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View all search results‘Paper Menagerie #3’: Anxieties of a broken world
Featuring 108 works by 63 Indonesian artists, the exhibition explores cultural memory, environmental decline and the human costs of development through the versatile medium of paper.
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Eyes on the art: Visitors photograph works on Sept. 18, 2026, during the opening of Paper Menagerie #3: On Equal Grounds at ISA Art Gallery in Central Jakarta. (JP/Sylviana Hamdani)
I
n Ken Liu’s short story The Paper Menagerie (2011), a mother breathes life into her origami animals, sending them scurrying, fluttering and playing alongside her young son. Folded from paper, these tiny creatures carry a world of their own, shaped by imagination, memory and the beautiful bond between mother and child.
This story has inspired Paper Menagerie, a series of exhibitions by ISA Art Gallery featuring artworks made with paper by Indonesian artists since 2024.
“For this third edition, we wanted to broaden the idea and bring together artists working across a wide range of practices,” said Miranti Dian Savitri, curator of ISA Art Gallery, Central Jakarta, during a press tour on Sep. 18. “Paper becomes a shared material where different practices can coexist, without boundaries or hierarchies separating them.”
At ISA Art Gallery in Central Jakarta, Paper Menagerie #3: On Equal Grounds brings together 63 Indonesian artists from three generations, with 108 works that use paper to reflect the world we inhabit and the anxieties we feel about its future.
“The work makes visible what we cannot normally see, drawing attention to air pollution, particularly in Indonesia’s urban areas.” — Erica Suwandi, assistant exhibition manager
Paper trails of memory
In the exhibition, pioneering Indonesian modern artist and educator A.D. Pirous draws on the rich visual traditions of his native Aceh in two paintings: Motif Tilam Aceh (acrylic on paper, 1983), inspired by tilam, a traditional mat, and Ornamen Aceh (acrylic on canvas, 2011), which revisits kasab, traditional Acehnese embroidery. In the latter, he incorporates intricate paper cuttings into the painting, carrying the age-old embroidery pattern into a new artistic context.
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