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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.

2 days 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”.

4 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

Kissing, spitting and puking: The highs and lows of Cannes

With fewer parties, lots of masks and stars having to regularly fill tubes with spit for Covid tests, the 74th edition of the Cannes film festival has been less glamorous than normal. 

4 years ago
Art & Culture

Shakespeare company opens garden theatre by River Avon

Based in playwright William Shakespeare's birthplace of Stratford-upon-Avon, the company, known as the RSC, built the Lydia & Manfred Gorvy Garden Theatre outside its Swan Theatre by the River Avon.

4 years ago
Art & Culture

'Jerusalema' hit-maker says Africa now hitting its stride

"Now is the time for Africa to shine, to present our culture to the world." 

4 years ago
Art & Culture premium

Igniting Balinese cultural memory with the Afghan box camera

Black and white photographs are having a resurgence amid the sea of Balinese imagery circulating on the internet. Compelling pictures of yesteryear, describing the people and landscape, ignite nostalgia.

4 years ago
Art & Culture

Frida Kahlo exhibition brings her work alive

With larger-than-life projections of her work, music and journal extracts, a new exhibition aims to bring Mexican surrealist Frida Kahlo's paintings to life to mark the 114th anniversary of her birth.

4 years ago
Art & Culture

Ancient bone carving could change the way we think about Neanderthals

The engraving, discovered at a German cave where Neanderthals lived tens of thousands of years ago, has no obvious utility according to researchers who say the artifact sheds new light on the ill-fated species' capacity for creativity.

4 years ago
Art & Culture

Multi-story mural for hometown hero Messi

"From another galaxy... and from my neighborhood," declares a freshly painted mural of Lionel Messi in the Argentinian town where he was born 34 years ago.

4 years ago
Art & Culture

In Denmark, grazing is alive with the sound of music

The cows were first introduced to the classical repertoire through loudspeakers installed in their barn in the winter, but it quickly seemed to strike a chord with the bovine audience.

4 years ago
Art & Culture

Delia Fiallo, "mother of the telenovela," dies in Miami

Adored by her fans, Fiallo left her mark on US Hispanic popular culture in the second half of the 20th century. She started her career in Cuba in 1950 with radio soap operas before writing her first television screenplay in 1957. 

4 years ago
Art & Culture

Picasso painting found in Greek gorge years after heist

A Picasso painting which personally donated by the Spanish master to the Greek people had recovered almost a decade after it was stolen alongside two other artworks in an audacious heist at the National Gallery.

4 years ago
Art & Culture

From tattoos to tokens at Tokyo's first crypto art show

Tokyo tattoo artist Ichi Hatano's usual business has dwindled during the pandemic, but now he's keen to mine a new stream of income at Japan's first crypto art exhibition.

4 years ago
Art & Culture

Dutch to check artwork stolen by Nazis for restitution

A total of 3,040 objects from the collection of cultural works returned to the country after the war will be examined.

4 years ago
Art & Culture

David Bowie painting bought for $4 sold at auction for nearly $90,000

Auctioneer Rob Cowley said a dozen bidders vied for the computer and acrylic collage on canvas that is part of the so-called D Head series of portraits of the Ziggy Stardust rocker himself, his friends, and others that he painted between 1995 and 1997.

4 years ago
Art & Culture premium

Srihadi Soedarsono paints Jakarta in its past, present and future glory

A 2-by-4 meter oil on canvas is painted in the unique Wayang Beber style, portraying Jakarta in different eras by vivid colors and important landmarks.

4 years ago
Art & Culture

Futuristic Gehry tower opens in World Heritage Arles

The tower, which opens to the public on Saturday, is the flagship attraction of a new "creative campus" conceived by the Swiss Luma arts foundation that wants to offer artists a space to create, collaborate and showcase their work.

4 years ago
Art & Culture

David Bowie painting bought for $4 sold at auction for nearly $90,000

A painting by British pop icon David Bowie recently discovered and purchased for about $4 at a Canadian store that resells donated goods, has been sold at auction in Toronto for nearly $90,000 (Can$108,120), the auction house said Friday.

4 years ago
Art & Culture

First oaks felled for Notre Dame cathedral rebuild

Experts have been scouring forests across France to select 1,000 developed oaks with long, straight trunks that can be used in the spire and roof of the Gothic cathedral, which was ravaged by fire in April 2019. 

4 years ago
Art & Culture

Churchill painting from Onassis superyacht sells for $1.85 mln

"The Moat, Breccles," a signed 1921 oil landscape, went for within its pre-sale estimate price of between $1.5 million and $2 million.

4 years ago
Art & Culture

Ancient sculptures prompt Germany to reckon with colonial past

But the 16th-18th century metal plaques and sculptures that once decorated the royal palace of the Kingdom of Benin may never see the light of day in a German museum again.

4 years ago
Art & Culture

'Godfather' of Tibetan rap spits karmic rhymes

In his tracksuit, silver chain and sparkling trainers, MC Tenzin would look like any other rapper if not for the backdrop of towering Himalayan peaks in his videos and rhyme-dropping about karma.

4 years ago
Art & Culture premium

Digitizing Balinese iconography into the 21st century

The 21st-century digital creative economy is the catalyst and thriving platform to propel Balinese creatives into new and growing local and international markets. Technology and the internet empower emerging artists, pushing their cultural iconography to fresh heights. New domestic and foreign audiences are embracing it.

4 years ago
Art & Culture

Waxing lyrical: Madame Tussauds to open museum in Dubai

Madame Tussauds will open its first outpost in the Arab world in Dubai later this year.

4 years ago
Art & Culture

David Bowie painting from donation bin up for auction

A painting by British pop icon David Bowie recently discovered at a Canadian store that resells donated goods had frantic bidders lining up for a chance to own it.

4 years ago
Art & Culture

Nearly 800 archeological finds stolen from Italy returned

The nearly 800 pieces "of exceptional rarity and inestimable value", including stelae, amphorae and other works, came from clandestine excavations in Apulia in Italy's southeastern tip, according to the Carabinieri police in charge of cultural heritage.

4 years ago
Art & Culture

New museum gingerly explores German wartime suffering

The new museum dedicated to the long-silenced trauma of ethnic Germans forced to flee eastern Europe at the end of World War II.

4 years ago
Art & Culture

Women build the city': Vienna's space for female architects

A visionary project in Vienna aims to create a suburb in the Austrian capital designed by and for women.

4 years ago
Art & Culture

Live audience 'baby steps' back to normality for Milan fashion

The numbers are still modest, with only Armani, Dolce & Gabbana and Etro inviting an audience to their men's Spring/Summer 2022 collections

4 years ago
Art & Culture

Centuries-old shipwrecks found off Singapore

The wrecks were found off Pedra Branca, a rocky outcrop east of Singapore, according to the National Heritage Board and think tank the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, which worked together on the project.

4 years ago
Art & Culture

Dutch 'Golden Coach' exhibition revives racism debate

Nearly six years later, the monarch was back on Thursday to unveil a newly-restored carriage -- but this time as the centrepiece of an exhibition at the Amsterdam Museum exploring the Netherlands' troubled relationship with its colonial past.

4 years ago
Art & Culture

Italian graphic artist designs homage to Denmark's Eriksen

A graphic artist in Italy has customised a pair of boots with the Danish flag and Inter Milan's logo for footballer Christian Eriksen, who is recovering after collapsing during a match.

4 years ago