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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

Europe bids to join NFT art auction craze

Europe has joined the craze for NFTs, virtual art pieces inspired by cryptocurrencies that turn the impermanence of the internet into a prized collector's item to be bought and sold like a Rembrandt.

4 years ago
Art & Culture

The show goes on for UK theatres as Covid rules ease

The curtain went up again in Britain's theatres this week, after a year of closure due to the coronavirus pandemic, bringing hopes of recovery for the beleaguered culture sector.

4 years ago
Art & Culture

Dutch slavery exhibition confronts brutal past

Dutch national Rijksmuseum opens a landmark exhibition on slavery highlighting the Netherlands' dark colonial past.

4 years ago
Art & Culture premium

'Wayang uwuh': Using trash to preserve tradition and save the planet

A Yogyakarta craftsman has given life to his dual passion of cultural and environmental conservation in wayang uwuh: shadow puppets he makes out of recycled materials.

4 years ago
Art & Culture premium

Rio Saren parts with convention to forge fresh direction in Balinese art

The Balinese painter and sculptor eschews artistic conventions through a unique style that fuses imagination with a philosophical underpinning.

4 years ago
Art & Culture

Picasso painting sells for $103 million in New York: auction house

The painting, completed in 1932, was sold after 19 minutes of bidding for $90 million, which rose to $103.4 million when fees and commissions were added, Christie's said.

4 years ago
Art & Culture

Basquiat painting sells in New York for $93.1 million

The 1983 painting, which depicts a skull on a red background, sold for $81 million, but with fees and commissions the final price came to $93.1 million, well above the estimate of $50 million.

4 years ago
Art & Culture

Long-overlooked Black artists dominate New York spring sales

Black artists are represented like never before at New York's spring sales next week after years of being overlooked and underappreciated.

4 years ago
Art & Culture

Ancient Roman 'domus' with mosaic floors tucked under modern flats

At the entrance of the 1950s building at the foot of Rome's Aventine Hill, all appears normal, with a resident loaded with shopping bags kindly holding the door. 

4 years ago
Art & Culture

Billie Eilish and Timothee Chalamet among young Met Gala co-chairs

Normally held in early May, the charity ball was postponed to September 13 in the hope that many Covid-19 restrictions will be lifted by then. The 2020 edition was canceled due to the pandemic.

4 years ago
Art & Culture

Previewing the Traditional, Modern and Contemporary Art sale at Larasati Bali

Artworks categorized by the Ubud School of Painting, the most famous Balinese art genre, feature in the upcoming Traditional, Modern and Contemporary Art Larasati Bali Sale in Ubud on Saturday.

4 years ago
Art & Culture

Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli serenades ancient Saudi city

Bocelli performed alongside his family members at UNESCO World Heritage site Hegra in the kingdom's Al-Ula governorate, a long-isolated area seen widely as an open-air museum.

4 years ago
Art & Culture

Artists in Bali respond to NFT craze

The revolutionary development of digital technology within contemporary art is taking the world by storm. It is not aesthetic distinctions that characterize the latest art trend, but a new term associated with the distributed ledger technology that allows for artworks to be easily tracked and traded. The Jakarta Post talks with two Bali-based artists about the crypto art craze.  

4 years ago
Art & Culture premium

Adrian Adioetomo: I’m Throwing Myself into the Fire

With a music career spanning 15 years, bluesman Adrian Adieotomo has done it all, but on his new album, he had to go somewhere he hadn’t been before.

4 years ago
Art & Culture premium

Indah Arsyad: Metamorphosing science & technology through artistic expression

A landscape and environmental engineer by trade, Indah takes her technical training and insights and transforms them into creative works that comment on the human condition.

4 years ago
Art & Culture premium

An alternate look at mundane objects

A lounge chair with resin infused in its cracks; a wooden standing lamp with a wine bucket as its lampshade; a dining chair with metal legs and attached trolley wheels. Creative project ReaR Window’s curiously-designed furniture veers between functional products and art objects.

4 years ago
Art & Culture

Iraq's Jewish community dwindles to fewer than five

At the Habibiya Jewish cemetery in the capital Baghdad, wedged between the Martyr Monument erected by ex-dictator Saddam Hussein and the restive Shiite stronghold of Sadr City, an aged Muslim man still tends to the graves, but visitors are rare.

4 years ago
Art & Culture

Rarely seen Paris Van Gogh sells for over $15 million

"Street Scene in Montmartre" -- on public display for the first time since its creation in 1887, after a century in the same collection -- fetched 13.09 million euros ($15.4 million), the auction house said.

4 years ago
Art & Culture

Rare Van Gogh painting of Paris up for auction

"Street Scene in Montmartre" is the highlight of 33 works from masters including Degas, Magritte, Modigliani, Klee, Rodin and his muse Camille Claudel being sold in an auction streamed live by Sotheby's in Paris.

4 years ago
Art & Culture

NFT artwork by humanoid robot sells at auction for nearly $700,000

NFTs, a digital signature saved on blockchain ledgers that allows anyone to verify the ownership and authenticity of items, have become the latest investment craze, with one artwork selling this month for nearly $70 million.

4 years ago
Art & Culture

Banksy NHS tribute sells for record $20 million at auction

"Game Changer", which was unveiled last May at University Hospital Southampton, paid tribute to the frontline workers of Britain's National Health Service (NHS) in their fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

4 years ago
Art & Culture

Israel unearths fragments of 2000-year-old biblical scroll

"For the first time in approximately 60 years, archaeological excavations have uncovered fragments of a biblical scroll," the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) said in a statement. 

4 years ago
Art & Culture

Boris says no to returning Parthenon Marbles to Greece

"The British government has a firm and long-standing position on the sculptures: they were legally acquired by Lord Elgin, in accordance with the laws in force at the time," Johnson told Greek newspaper Ta Nea.

4 years ago
Art & Culture

South Koreans hope to keep late Samsung chief’s $1.8 billion art collection

"The reason many go to the Louvre is to see the Mona Lisa, and the Sistine Chapel, the Creation of Adam. There are valuable masterpieces that can compare to that in the Lee collection," said the critic, who declined to be identified.

4 years ago
Art & Culture

Virtual art made of digital files fetches $69.3 million in Christie's auction

"Everydays: The First 5,000 Days" became the most expensive ever "non-fungible token" (NFT) -- a collectible digital asset that uses blockchain technology to turn virtual work into a unique item.

4 years ago
Art & Culture

Socially distanced Mozart? An English festival's thorny COVID choices

That was one of countless questions facing the managers of Glyndebourne, an opera house set in idyllic countryside in southern England, as they planned the 2021 summer festival whilst under COVID-19 lockdown.

4 years ago
Art & Culture

Tens of thousands of Hindu devotees take holy plunge in Ganges

Hindu ascetics known as Naga sadhus, many naked apart from a coating of ash and carrying swords or tridents, led the bathers at the Kumbh Mela, or pitcher festival, in the northern town of Haridwar.

4 years ago
Art & Culture

Syrian heritage suffered 'cultural apocalypse

A decade of war has not only destroyed Syria's present and poisoned its future, it has damaged beyond repair some of its fabled past.

4 years ago
Art & Culture

Erotic art in Indonesia: Outwardly scorned, secretly enjoyed

A furtive peek into the country’s sensual art world.

4 years ago
Art & Culture

Not your bitch: Campaign against 'sexist' dictionaries moves to Italy

About 100 high-profile Italians signed a letter demanding changes to the Treccani online dictionary after a similar campaign forced the Oxford English dictionary to alter its definition last year.

4 years ago