Attualità indonesiane

Indonesian Actualities “If art had a message, I’d be a postman,” said Nabokov. If we talk about contemporary art at the time of the open work, the idea of the message belongs more to the white walls of Sunday school, rather than to the immaculate walls of the contemporary art’s “white cubes”.

Regardless of the subjective understanding of artwork, social art has always been difficult. When it comes to do social art, it’s hard to fight for ideals, for a vision of justice and harmony, without resulting preachy or moralistic.

Most of the time social art makes us think of a Greenpeace campaigner or a left-wing agitator, animated by frantic search of the “message”. Although the intention might be good, in terms of art what we have is a cheap symbolism or a didactic intent. Dear Pellizza Da Volpedo, wouldn’t it be easier to write a pamphlet or rather, as Nabokov would say, wear the yellow uniform of the Italian post office?

The alternative to the “message” is, as we mentioned earlier, the open work. But again, this idea makes us imagine artists as spineless aesthetes who get up at noon, and then go down to the cafe to have cappuccino and a chocolate croissant for breakfast. Instead of reading a newspaper, they’d linger on Instagram, as if time didn’t matter.

In this scenario, Il Ramo D’Oro turned to other latitudes for a kind of art escaping these two extremes. Here comes Indonesia. Contemporary art produced in the archipelago provides a good