Art Jakarta 2026: Naufal Abshar, Butaoxi, Chen Sung-Chih, Chen Wei-Chen x Tomohiro Hanada, Chiu Huai-Hsuan, Yuichi Hirako, Hsieh Jung-Wei, Huang Po-Chih, Sarita Ibnoe, Jiang Meng-Si, Keng Chieh-Sheng, Widi Pangestu, Hudan Seltan, Shih Yung-Chun, Tsai Pou-Ching, Wang Guan-Jhen, Yan Jheng-Hao, Yuan Hsin-Yuan, Zuraisa

For this year's Art Jakarta, YIRI ARTS presents Material Polyphony, a curatorial framework bringing together artists from Taiwan, Indonesia, and Japan. Spanning painting, sculpture, ceramics, installation, and interdisciplinary practices, the presentation examines the shifting relationships between material, body, and time.

Against the continued expansion of digital imagery and virtual experience, the exhibition returns to materiality itself, considering how artists establish relationships with the world through sustained and repeated engagement with their chosen media.

The presentation is structured around three interconnected ideas: labor, order, and transformation. Here, labor is understood not merely as a means of production, but as a method of perceiving and interpreting reality. Order is not approached as a fixed system, but as a provisional structure formed in response to uncertainty. Transformation, meanwhile, points to the continuous changes that unfold across materials, bodies, and social relations over time.

The works move between paper, wood, clay, and everyday objects, extending into questions of the natural environment, industrial structures, and social systems. Through processes of repetition, cutting, layering, translation, and reconfiguration, materials become more than formal vessels; they emerge as sites where time, memory, emotion, and social experience accumulate.

By bringing together artistic practices shaped by different geographical and cultural contexts, Material Polyphony reflects on the multiple ways contemporary Asian art responds to materiality, labor, and the relationship between human beings and their environments. Between rational structures and sensorial transformation, the exhibition opens a dialogue on the body, time, and matter.