TheJakartaPost

Please Update your browser

Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.

Jakarta Post
Futuristic Semar: Cast members of 'Mencari Semar' pose with director Rangga Riantiarno (top, third left), scenographer Deden Bulqini (top, fourth left), Bakti Budaya Djarum Foundation’s program manager Billy Gamaliel (top, center) and Teater Koma’s cofounder Ratna Riantiarno (top, fourth right) on July 31, 2025, after attending a press conference at Galeri Indonesia Kaya in Jakarta. JP/Sylviana Hamdani
Futuristic Semar: Cast members of 'Mencari Semar' pose with director Rangga Riantiarno (top, third left), scenographer Deden Bulqini (top, fourth left), Bakti Budaya Djarum Foundation’s program manager Billy Gamaliel (top, center) and Teater Koma’s cofounder Ratna Riantiarno (top, fourth right) on July 31, 2025, after attending a press conference at Galeri Indonesia Kaya in Jakarta. JP/Sylviana Hamdani
Art & Culture premium

‘Mencari Semar’: Teater Koma seeks ancient wisdom in the digital age

The play unfolds in the futuristic realm of the Nimacha Empire, where humans are gradually being overpowered by droids and robots.

17 hours ago
Art & Culture premium

Artistic heritage meets modern beats at 2025 ‘Pagelaran Sabang Merauke’

Music director Elwin Hendrijanto says the show will fuse contemporary arrangements with traditional sounds like Kalimantan’s Karungut and the Batak song “Rambadia”.

2 days ago
Art & Culture premium

LIFEs 2025 explores national identity through art and literature

The Literature and Ideas Festival returns from Aug. 8-16 with "Menjadi Indonesia", featuring over 35 performers.

1 week ago

The Latest

Art & Culture

The 2021 Nobels: an almost 100 percent male affair

While four women won Nobel prizes in 2020 -- close to the 2009 record of five -- the awards remain male-dominated as much of the prizewinning work dates back 20, 30 or even 40 years when fewer women reached the top levels of academic research.

3 years ago
Art & Culture premium

Abstract exploration: Two artists helping to evolve Bali's 3D contemporary art

Some of the most recent developments in Balinese contemporary art trace their roots not to the “Island of the Gods” but to Yogyakarta, where the arts scene is a melting pot of cultures from across the archipelago.

3 years ago
Art & Culture premium

Taliban now guard site of Bamiyan Buddhas they destroyed

The monuments in Bamiyan province had stood for 1,500 years but their destruction was ordered in 2001 by that regime -- already infamous then after banning television and imposing ultra-strict rules governing the conduct of women -- for being against the Muslim faith.

3 years ago
Art & Culture

Winnie-the-Pooh bridge fetches over £130,000 at UK auction

Originally known as Posingford Bridge, it captured the imaginations of children as "Poohsticks Bridge" where the honey-loving teddy bear invented one of the most famous children's games.

3 years ago
Art & Culture premium

French Vogue marks 100 years but is it still in fashion?

But as a new exhibition in Paris marks the magazine's 100th birthday, times are troubled at the fabled magazine. 

3 years ago
Art & Culture

When the music's over: Musicians flee Afghanistan, fearing Taliban crackdown

Fearing a crackdown on music by the country's new leaders, a total 101 members of Afghanistan's top musical institute landed in Doha on Sunday evening, Ahmad Sarmast said.

3 years ago
Art & Culture

Post-pandemic experimentation at Paris Fashion Week

Paris Fashion Week wraps up Tuesday after days of innovative experiments that showed how the industry is embracing technology and new approaches for a post-pandemic future.

3 years ago
Art & Culture

Banksy's famous balloon girl work to go on sale

The two-part or diptych canvas depicts a small child letting go of a heart-shaped red balloon and was painted by the elusive wall dauber in 2005.

3 years ago
Art & Culture

Great-grandmother keeps Indian martial art alive

Deftly parrying her son with a bamboo cane, Meenakshi Amma belies her 78 years with her prowess at kalari, thought to be India's oldest martial art.

3 years ago
Art & Culture

Danish artist loaned $84,000 by museum keeps cash, says it's art

Jens Haaning, a Danish artist, ended up pocketing the 534,000 kroner ($84,000) that the museum loaned him and sending blank canvasses with a new title: "Take the Money and Run".

3 years ago
Art & Culture premium

Changing the narrative: contemporary musicians take on 'Genjer-Genjer'

The song ‘Genjer-Genjer’ is often associated with a scene of brutal slaughter in the Indonesian pseudo-docudrama Pengkhianatan G30S/PKI.

3 years ago
Art & Culture

Never released John Lennon recording to be auctioned in Copenhagen

The tape, featuring the song "Radio Peace", was recorded on Jan. 5, 1970 by four Danish boys who had succeeded in getting a interview with the couple for a local school magazine.

3 years ago
Art & Culture

Dutch man gets eight years for Van Gogh, Hals thefts

A Dutch court sentenced a man to eight years in jail Friday for stealing two paintings by Vincent van Gogh and Frans Hals from small museums.

3 years ago
Art & Culture premium

Resilience on display: How Indonesia’s art industry copes with the pandemic

Can our art industry, a sector that relies heavily on live performances, survive the pandemic? 

3 years ago
Art & Culture premium

Illuminating I Gusti Made Deblog: The mysterious icon of Balinese art

What separated the often-reclusive artist from his peers was his achievements beyond the conventions with Chinese ink and his naturalist painting style development.

3 years ago
Art & Culture premium

Nirvana's Nevermind: An album forged by contradictions

Released 30 years ago this week, Nevermind was a generation-defining milestone that sold 30 million copies and made a tragic icon of Kurt Cobain.

3 years ago
Art & Culture premium

'Art is dying': Afghan artists hope to resist Taliban rule

Two days after the Taliban seized Kabul last month, 26-year-old artist Sara took the terracotta plates she'd painted and hurled them to the ground.

3 years ago
Art & Culture

Notes of desperation: Pandemic exacerbates struggles of Indonesian musicians

The job drought experienced by Indonesia’s working musicians during the pandemic shows the lack of support the country’s creative workers have always had.

3 years ago
Art & Culture

Notre-Dame de Paris finally ready for restoration

France's Notre-Dame cathedral is finally ready to undergo restoration work more than two years after a blaze ravaged the heritage landmark.

3 years ago
Art & Culture

Saudi Arabia's desert camel carvings dated to around 7,000 years ago

The 21 reliefs, which were only recently discovered, are heavily eroded and were initially estimated in 2018 to be some 2,000 years old based on similarities with artworks found in Petra in Jordan. 

3 years ago
Art & Culture

Russian art trove and its tortured history comes to Paris

The line-up at the Louis Vuitton Foundation's new exhibition in Paris reads like a who's who of artistic giants from the Belle Epoque: Van Gogh, Picasso, Monet, Matisse, Cezanne... 

3 years ago
Art & Culture

Masterpiece or monstrosity? Tourists bemused by Arc de Triomphe artwork

Workers on harnesses spent several days enveloping the 50-meter, 19th century arch in a silvery blue, recyclable plastic curtain, a project first imagined decades ago by the late Bulgarian-born Christo.

3 years ago
Art & Culture premium

Eternal love for Indonesia: Knowing Sultan Agung through S. Sudjojono's strokes

Art exhibition Mukti Negeriku! highlights the creative processes behind a lasting masterpiece that narrates history.

3 years ago
Art & Culture premium

New Belgian opera evokes US racial discord

Baroque, jazz, rap: centuries of musical heritage intertwine to tell the tale of a mixed-race family in a new opera being premiered in Brussels based on an epic novel of America's troubled 20th century.

3 years ago
Art & Culture premium

Robert Wilson, avant-garde theatre legend: 'France gave me a home'

Theatre director Robert Wilson helped transform the way opera is seen around the world, but as he turns 80, it is still Europe that comes calling, while he remains largely ignored back home in the US.

3 years ago
Art & Culture premium

Gold armor for Lil Nas X, all black for Kim Kardashian at Met Gala

The crowd of some 400 actors, athletes, poets and performers -- all of whom were either vaccinated or had tested negative for Covid-19 -- was largely maskless on the cream carpet, defying the global coronavirus pandemic that forced the cancellation of last year's event. 

3 years ago
Art & Culture premium

Eko Supriyanto: revisiting and reinterpreting dance

An Indonesian dance veteran has experienced everything from working with Madonna to creating his own routines

3 years ago
Art & Culture

Wrapping of Arc de Triomphe begins in Christo tribute

After weeks of preparations, the final stage of the art installation has begun, with a silver-blue sheet unfurled from the top of the imposing war memorial at the top of the Champs-Elysees. 

3 years ago
Art & Culture premium

Sao Paulo art fest gives voice to resistance in times of darkness

A meteorite salvaged from a 2018 fire at Rio de Janeiro's National Museum symbolizes resistance to the destruction of culture in times of darkness.

3 years ago
Art & Culture

Halloween's Jamie Lee Curtis: 'I hate horror movies'

The 62 year-old actress said the secret to her success in the horror genre is that she was scared easily.

3 years ago