PROJECT
PROJECT
Presented in Parallel Event: Jogja Biennale Equator XI Indonesia-India, Yogyakarta
Tak Ada rotan Akar Punjabi explores the cultural encounter between Indian popular culture and Indonesian society. It draws from preliminary research on various phenomena—such as the Indonesian fascination with dangdut music, the rising popularity of the mullet hairstyle, the fusion of aerobic exercises with Indian pop songs, linguistic borrowings, and culinary similarities between the two cultures. These observations form the basis for a deeper investigation into the hybrid forms emerging from cross-cultural influences.
The project title modifies the Indonesian proverb “Tak Ada Rotan, Akar Pun Jadi” (literally: “If there is no rattan, roots will do”), which conveys the idea of turning to alternative solutions when the ideal option is unavailable. In this reinterpretation, the phrase is humorously altered to “Tak Ada Rotan, Akar Punjabi”, referencing Punjabis—entrepreneurs of Indian descent widely recognized for their role in producing Indonesian soap operas and popular films. By blending Indian and Indonesian cultural elements, the title offers a subversive and critical reading of the ways Indian popular culture has been assimilated and recontextualized in Indonesia.
While parodic in form, the title retains the essence of the original saying, evoking the notions of improvisation and adaptability. It gestures toward a public cultural space where alternatives can emerge and creativity thrives—where encounters with popular culture become fertile ground for the production of new cultural meanings.
Presented in Jakarta Biennale 15th: SIASAT, Jakarta
Realis Tekno Museum is a mini pop-up museum exploring the intersections of technology, realism, and popular culture in Indonesian society. The term realis-tekno, a blend of realist and technology, reflects the friction and hybridity of urban life, where digital modernity intersects with local realities.
Initiated through case studies in Bandungan and its surrounding areas in Semarang Regency, Central Java, this project examines how everyday practices such as karaoke, gambling, motorcycle modifications, and illegal street racing evolve into cultural expressions and distinct lifestyles. Often perceived as marginal, these activities are reinterpreted here as vibrant social phenomena that shape identity, creativity, and collective belonging.
Beyond entertainment, they function as informal technologies of social interaction, spaces where people negotiate class, aspiration, and modernity. Through these practices, new symbols of status emerge, transforming the social fabric and revealing the adaptive, inventive nature of local communities.
Positioned as both an archive and an experiment, Realis Tekno Museum recontextualizes the aesthetics of everyday life and questions distinctions between high and low culture. It invites reflection on how technology and realism intertwine within Indonesian popular culture, shaping the ways people connect, express, and define themselves.
Back To The Future is a retrospective exhibition featuring works by members of Ace House Collective, highlighting their artistic processes over the past decade.
The exhibition traces the patterns and methodologies of their creative practices, approaches that cannot be fully understood through final outcomes alone, but rather through years of sustained experimentation and exploration. By foregrounding the processual aspects of art-making, the exhibition reveals the underlying conceptual frameworks and material inquiries that shape the collective’s body of work.
This long-term engagement also reflects the evolution of a distinctive artistic style that has come to define Ace House Collective. Their practice represents a significant contribution to the development of contemporary art in Indonesia and continues to influence a younger generation of artists through its criticality, playfulness, and engagement with social and cultural discourse.
Three Musketeers Project - 3M (2014, 2026, 2018)
The Three Musketeers Project is a biennial program initiated by Ace House Collective to support the development of emerging art practitioners under the age of 28 through an informal, practice-based educational framework.
Over the course of three months, three selected participants engage in an intensive mentorship process facilitated by members of Ace House Collective and invited professionals from the fields of art and culture.
The program emphasizes the significance of exploration and experimentation in artistic practice and production. Participants take part in a range of activities, including lectures, studio visits, critical review sessions, and public discussions, all aimed at encouraging reflective inquiry and fostering the development of a critical and contextually responsive artistic approach.
KNPS - Komisi Nasional Pemurnian Seni (2015)
National Committee for Art Purification
Presented in Jogja Biennale Equator XIII Indonesia - Nigeria: Hacking Conflict
KNPS is a performative work situated within a site-specific installation that materializes the act of self-criticism, an inherently intangible process of purification, through tangible, physical acts of refinement.
In this work, KNPS adopts the guise of a ‘formal institution’ that appears to hold legal and moral authority to compel individuals to undergo a purification process. The bureaucratic system embedded in the installation invites participants to engage with a constructed administrative structure, provoking tensions both within individuals, particularly in relation to their personal ideologies, and in the broader social context in which the work is situated.
Through this performative and participatory framework, the project aims not only to simulate physical purification but also to offer a deeper, embodied experience of the psychological and ideological conflicts that may emerge in the act of self-criticism.
Kaleidoskop Project (2015)
Kaleidoskop Project
Kaleidoskop Project is a biennial exhibition program that serves as a platform for emerging artists to present contemporary artistic practices in Yogyakarta. Initiated collaboratively by Kedai Kebun Forum, Ruang MES 56, and Ace House Collective, the program seeks to cultivate critical discourse and experimental approaches within the local art ecosystem.
In its 2015 edition, Kaleidoskop Project introduced Jong Institut as its curatorial framework. Conceived as a temporary institution, Jong Institut functions as a space for investigating concepts of communal living and collective labor through artistic methodologies.
Curated by Syafiatudina, this initiative was developed in collaboration with the three organizing institutions and aimed to build infrastructures and working models that support sustainable collaboration. Drawing on each organization's long-standing experience in managing alternative art spaces, the project underscores the importance of shared authorship, mutual learning, and institutional experimentation in shaping inclusive and context-responsive curatorial practices.
Ace Mart - Grosir Seni (2015 – 2018)
Ace Mart - Art Grocery
Ace Mart is a site-specific, performative artwork conceived as a pop-up convenience store that reconfigures the function of the gallery into a participatory social space.
Installed at Ace House, within a residential neighborhood, experiencing the very dynamics the project explores, the work transforms a conventional exhibition site into an environment that encourages interaction between artists, audiences, and the local community.
By adopting the familiar format of a retail space, Ace Mart invites critical reflection on the intersections of consumer culture, everyday life, and contemporary art. It challenges traditional notions of spectatorship and institutional display, emphasizing accessibility and public engagement. The work proposes an alternative curatorial approach rooted in relational aesthetics, where participation becomes integral to meaning-making.
Ace Mart thus blurs the boundaries between art and life, highlighting the potential of informal, context-responsive curatorial strategies to foster dialogue, expand artistic practice, and address the socio-cultural specificity of place.
After All These Year(s) (2017)
After All These Year(s) functions as both an exhibition and a retrospective platform that revisits the emergence of graffiti in Yogyakarta in the early 2000s. The movement developed through the practices of individuals affiliated with formal art institutions—particularly students from the Visual Art Department of the Indonesian Institute of the Arts (ISI Yogyakarta) and the Yogyakarta High School of Fine Arts (SMSR)—alongside a small group of independent practitioners known as bombers.
During the program period, weekly graffiti jamming sessions were organized into five generational categories representing key phases in the development of graffiti crews and practitioners: Class of 2006; Class of 2005; Class of 2004; Class of 2003; and an All Class session that convened multiple generations of graffiti artists who have shaped Yogyakarta’s graffiti scene.
The exhibition brings previously unseen documentation and artifacts into the public domain, framing them as fragments of urban memory and inviting critical reflection on the historical development of graffiti. By integrating archival materials and personal narratives, After All These Year(s) positions graffiti as a sustained cultural practice embedded within Yogyakarta’s urban environment, tracing its transformation from ephemeral interventions into an enduring cultural movement.
Arisan Tenggara: Southeast Asia Art Collectives Forum (2018)
Arisan Tenggara is a residency program conceived as a pilot platform for developing inter-collective working mechanisms across Southeast Asia. Conducted over a two-month period, the program facilitated partnerships between Southeast Asian collectives and Yogyakarta-based art collectives, with the aim of fostering collaborative engagement and translocal exchange.
In this initiative, Ace House Collective, in collaboration with Krack! Studio, Lifepatch, Ruang Gulma, Ruang MES 56, and SURVIVE! Garage, served as host institutions for six collectives from the region: Tentacles (Bangkok, Thailand), Tanah Indie (Makassar, Indonesia), WSK! (Manila, Philippines), Rumah Api (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia), Rekreatif and Gembel Art Collective (Dili, Timor-Leste).
By facilitating shared activities, discourse, and co-production, Arisan Tenggara aimed to strengthen solidarities, explore alternative models of artistic collaboration, and contribute to the formation of a sustainable Southeast Asian art network.