EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
- Biennale Jogja XVI was held on 6 October-14 November 2021. It has been enjoyed by approximately 2.1 million people through social media channels, 236.210 through our website, and 15,210 people through direct visits to four venue exhibitions, which could have been larger in number had it not been during a pandemic. In addition, this activity was published in 165 online media portals, 25 print media, and 15 electronic media, both local, national and international.
- With the support of Marinus Plantema Foundation, the Biennale Jogja XVI was able to present works by Mella Jaarsma and Agus Ongge, as well as works by young artist Ersal Umammit. The works of these artists reflect on various issues regarding decolonization discourse, the existence of indigenous peoples, and the various situated knowledge they have as a sovereignty that needs to be respected.
BACKGROUND
Biennale Jogja (BJ) is an international biennial event run by Yogyakarta Regional Government and organized by Yayasan Biennale Yogyakarta (YBY). It was first held in 1988, and this year it reaches its 16th edition. Starting from 2011, YBY launched the BJ Equator series project focusing on the equator regions. YBY assumes the equator as a new perspective as well as opens itself up to confront the ‘establishment’ as well the convention of such events. Equator is the starting point and the common platform to re-read the world.
The BJ Equator series will bring Indonesia, particularly Yogyakarta, on a trip around the planet for 12 years. On every event, the Biennale Equator collaborates with one or more countries or regions along the equator line. The meeting, realized in the form of visual arts events in BJ Equator, is organized in the spirit of building sustainable networks so that the dialog, partnerships, and cooperation can generate new and continuous possibilities among practitioners in the regions across the equator. It is expected that BJ can contribute to the topography formation of the newly formulated global visual art field. BJ is a festival focusing on visual art, organized every two years since 1988. Since 2011, BJ has been employing different strategies in line with the new direction as well as vision managed by YBY, namely utilizing the Equator line encircling the globe as a concrete practice in exploring and re-reading the world.
The first edition started with India (2011), continued with the Arab Region (2013), Nigeria (2015), Brazil (2017) and with South East Asia (2019). “Biennale Jogja XVI Equator #6 2021” is the sixth part of the BJ Equator series. BJ XVI will review the relationship between Yogyakarta (Indonesia) and Pacific (Oceania) countries as two partners sharing common concerns.
