The newly installed pieces of the Berlin Wall in Kalijodo child-friendly integrated public space have a long and dark history, and their installation in North Jakarta is a deep gesture of unity, but for many visitors they are merely graffiti-scrawled blocks that are “instagrammable” from several angles.

On Sunday, dozens of people came to take photographs at the area of the art installation entitled Patung Menembus Batas (Sculpture that Beyond Boundaries) from early morning. Some stood in front of the wall and some climbed the metal statues in front of the wall, while posing and smiling for cameras.

Little did many of them know that the sections of wall witnessed the ferocity of ideological differences that divided a nation, nor what they symbolized. Previously, Teguh Ostentrik an internationally renowned artist who donated the four sections to the city administration, said he wanted them to remind residents about the importance of maintaining unity despite differences.

Rian Alfian, 20, a visitor from Rangkas Bitung in Banten, West Java said he did not know anything about the installation, because he did not get any information about it.

“I did not know the history of the wall sections. I thought they were just ordinary walls with graffiti that were good for selfies,” he told The Jakarta Post over the weekend.

Similar to Rian, Mei Ling, 41, a visitor from Taman Sari, West Jakarta, said she knew about the wall after being informed by the guide of a city tour that she had taken.

The guide told her that she and other tour participants could see sections of the historic Berlin Wall, which had been installed in the park last Tuesday.

However, she did not even notice the sections when entering the park as she mistook them for pieces of steel sheeting.

“I mistakenly thought they were just ordinary walls made of steel sheeting when I saw them from a distance,” she said.

The four sections, each measuring 120-centimeters in width, 20-cm thick and 360-cm high, were part of over 150-kilometers of wall that divided then East and West Berlin.

The installation was inaugurated on Tuesday night by Jakarta Governor Djarot Saiful Hidayat, to coincide with the commemoration of German reunification.

Another visitor, Muhammad Ramdhan, 18, came all the way from Tambun Selatan in Bekasi, West Java, to take a look at the wall sections and to take pictures with them.

He told the Post that he heard about the wall sections on television news a few days earlier.

“I expected the wall sections not to be as good as seen on television because pictures could be deceiving. I was wrong. Although I expected them to be bigger,” he said.

Ramdhan said with good angles, the art installation’s colorful paintings and arrangement could be an awesome background for photographs.

Although he came for pictures, he said he knew some of the story of the art installation after reading information on the internet.

“I know that these wall sections are expensive, but the artist decided to give them away and put them here after keeping them for dozens of years,” he said.

Previously, German Ambassador to Indonesia Michael von Ungern-Stenberg said that the sections might be the only pieces of the wall in Southeast Asia.

In order to protect the art installation, Daenk Jamal, security coordinator of the park, said officials would oversee the area 24 hours a day in order to prevent visitors from spoiling the artwork.

He said that the visitors were forbidden from damaging the artwork, but they were allowed to climb the metal human figures.

“It is okay if the visitors want to climb the statues for taking pictures. However, we are still keeping an eye on the visitors because we want to maintain the artwork in its original condition without additional scratches or graffiti,” he said. (ecn)

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