Following last year’s strong comeback edition, Art Jakarta 2025 continued to affirm the fair’s position as one of the most vital meeting points for Southeast Asia’s contemporary art scene. Now in its 15th edition, the fair remains a cornerstone for artists, collectors, and institutions across the region, reflecting the growing confidence and maturity of Indonesia’s art ecosystem within the broader Asian landscape.
Held from 3–5 October 2025 at JIEXPO Kemayoran, Art Jakarta welcomed approximately 38,000 visitors, maintaining the robust attendance of the previous year. Despite a cautious global market, the fair recorded positive sales and an influx of new collectors, reinforcing the resilience and dynamism of Southeast Asia’s art community.
Featuring 75 galleries from 16 countries, the fair showcased the region’s creative diversity while introducing new artistic voices and cross-cultural dialogues. Among the highlights, Eddie Hara’s solo exhibition at the Julius Baer VIP Lounge, featuring his characteristically critical yet humorous work “CALL 911. DESTROY BAD ART,” drew more than 600 VIP guests and created a space for rare direct interaction with the artist.
Treasury’s “Reserve of Care” by Azizi Al Majid and Nuri Fatimah explored intergenerational legacy, resonating deeply with family audiences. Meanwhile, Bibit’s collaboration with Agus Suwage, “Self Portrait and the Theater Stage,” engaged visitors through a participatory project titled “Portrait of Possibilities,” inviting personal reflection and creative exchange.
Corporate partner BCA enlivened the fair with Petualangan Si Jabrik di Dunia myBCA, a collaboration with artist Muklay that combined playful visual storytelling with customer engagement.
International programmes added further dimension: Korea Focus, presented by the Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and Korea Arts Management Service, brought 12 emerging Korean galleries to Jakarta, while MTN for Arts and Culture’s “Rising Current,” presented by Indonesia’s Ministry of Culture, highlighted six acclaimed Indonesian artists to regional audiences.
A special preview of Art Jakarta Papers, a forthcoming paper-based art fair (5–8 February 2026), drew attention with print works by Krack!, Irfan Hendrian, and others, signaling the fair’s expanding curatorial vision.
A few presentations to highlight is Aditya Novali’s tower of what looked like reimagined cupboards in his AJ Spot presentation, “Object Impermanence (Intro)” (2025). Presented by ROH, Jakarta, this work in fact began with a fragment of an old wooden wardrobe inherited from the artist’s grandmother, its form multiplied vertically in different materials—cracked teak wood, rusted steel, reflective mirror—as a tower of abstracted forms. These absences weave a delicate thread binding together both personal and collective experience: about Novali’s grandmother, the lineage of Chinese Indonesians in Java, and historical events that shaped life from 1945, 1965 to 1998.
This year’s Art Jakarta welcomed a newcomer gallery, ara contemporary, with a strong booth presentation of Southeast Asian artists. The two-floor gallery is located in South Jakarta and currently shows two concurrent solo exhibitions, one by Thai artist Alisa Chuncue, “Wounds”, which deals with scars and bodies as well as “Interloper” by Bali-based Indonesian artist Mar Kristoff who interprets his own family archival photographs into paintings, video installation, and sculptures.
ArtSociates, a renown gallery based in Bandung, Indonesia, returned with a well-done presentation of mostly Bandung-based contemporary artists. Aurora Arazzi presented a unique paper-based wall piece, an introduction to her upcoming solo exhibition at the gallery opening in late October this year. Galih Adika Paripurna brought a rather large piece of resin painting, echoing his current solo exhibition at ArtSociates “Every Solid Thing Leaves a Trace”. Both names are emerging artists based in Bandung who studied at the Bandung Institute of Technology.
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