From October 3–5, Art Jakarta 2025 returned to JIEXPO Jemayoran, generating a vibrant buzz throughout the Indonesian capital. Now in its 15th edition, the art fair brought together 75 galleries from 16 Asian countries and beyond, with a strong, ongoing focus on Southeast Asian players. 

Indonesian galleries were front and center at the event, comprising about half of this year’s participants. ROH Projects, a linchpin of the city’s art scene, offered a curated presentation of more than 20 local and international artists under the theme “Warna Ibu,” examining human relationships to the natural world through a maternal lens. Throngs of people stopped by the booth to browse the selection of works, which included Yogyakarta-based artist Budi Santoso’s Kepala Sama Di Atas (2025), an approximately two-meter-tall sculpture of stacked human heads made of jackfruit wood; a small-scale tableau by Bandung-based Kei Imazu, Untitled (2025), of a hazy female figure amid tropical flora; and a new, untitled pale brick painting by Manila-based artist Maria Taniguchi. Two minimalist oil-on-panel works by Stella Zhong were also on view, coinciding with the Chinese-born multimedia artist’s solo exhibition at ROH Project’s gallery space, “Free-Range Suns.”

Equally in the limelight was ara contemporary, a newly founded gallery in Jakarta dedicated to Southeast Asian artists. Making its debut at the fair, the gallery occupied a sizeable floor plan and showcased new works by 21 artists from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam—including Arlette Quỳnh-Anh Trần’s metallic tree sculpture, Sharing one root, why torn apart? (2025); Irfan Hendrian’s intricate layers of paper on board (2025), which explores the papery medium’s sculptural potential; and Agan Harahap’s Happy Days (2025), a digitally manipulated “photograph” that depicts Hollywood star Marilyn Monroe alongside Sukarno, Indonesia’s first president, who helmed the country’s struggle for independence from Dutch colonialists and had an international reputation as a ladies’ man. One of the few politically charged works at the event, it drew on a CIA-produced pornographic film about Sukarno that was intended to undermine the latter’s image and leadership. Moreover, Ipeh Nur’s Ombak Belum Tidur (The Waves Haven’t Slept yet) (2024)—one of three major installations in the fair’s SPOT section—screened a video within a tent-like structure, fusing Indonesian folkloric imagery with footage of the Indian Ocean.

Despite the continued emphasis on homegrown galleries and creatives, this year’s Art Jakarta welcomed several participants from abroad, such as loyal exhibitors Ota Fine Arts (Singapore/Tokyo/Shanghai) and Sullivan+Strumpf (Singapore/Sydney/Melbourne), as well as first-timers Tina Keng Gallery and TKG+ (Taipei) and Esther Schipper (Seoul/Berlin/Paris). The latter’s booth presented works by four artists, including New York-based conceptual artist Anicka Yi’s Post Classical IV (2025), consisting of tempura-fried flowers encased in resin on a wall-mounted Plexiglass panel; and green yellow nun (2020), Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone’s iconic brightly-hued stacked boulder sculptures, which pulled in crowds. At Sullivan + Strumpf’s booth, works by Singaporean artists Yanyun Chen and Tiffany Loy were displayed alongside Yogyakarta-born artist Wisnu Auri’s dreamlike paintings and Jakarta-based artist Ella Wijt’s poetic, mixed-media sculptures composed of colored-pencil drawings arranged on quaint household objects. Ota Fine Art, meanwhile, showcased projects by a roster of Singaporean artists, including nostalgic scenes rendered in watercolor by Hilmi Johandi and Ming Wong’s AI-generated images, which adopted a new fictitious character called Susan Wongtag. 

Among other international participants, Baik Art and Gajah Gallery—both of whom have launched venues in Indonesia within the past decade—demonstrated a vested interest in joining the country’s art ecosystem and fostering cross-cultural dialogue. Originally founded in Los Angeles in 2014, Baik Art expanded to Seoul two years later before opening its third location in Jakarta in 2022; a highlight at the gallery’s booth was Mella Jaarsma’s daily performance Kakies on a Broken Floor (2025), during which the Dutch-born Yogyakarta-based artist stamped a 30-meter-long strip of cotton fabric with painted shoe- and footprints, referencing the colonial history of Indonesia’s textile industry. On the other hand, Gajah Gallery—which is headquartered in Singapore but expanded to Yogyakarta and Jakarta in 2015 and 2022, respectively—gathered an extensive range of established and emerging artists for its booth. While Talawi-born artist Yunizar’s aluminum sculpture of a bountiful tree, Pohon Buah (Fruit Tree) (2025), made its playful debut here, a special corner of the booth featured works by four seminal Indonesian artists: Dewa Putu Mokoh, Edmondo (Mondo) Zanolini, I Gusti Ayu Kadek Murniasih (Murni), and OO Totol. 

Adding to the event’s international flair was Korea Focus—presented by the Korean Ministry of Culture, Sport, and Tourism and the Korea Arts Management Service—where a dozen young South Korean galleries introduced an array of emerging artists from the East Asian country. Though this section was relatively small and left much to be desired in terms of truly inventive and experimental art, it offered up some noteworthy gems, such as Jiyoung Kwon’s delicately distorted glazed porcelain works at PS Center’s booth; and a kinetic wood-and-cloth sculpture titled A Man without Words H1/30 (2025) by Jung Uk Yang, the winner of the Korea Artist Prize 2024, at Gallery Soso’s booth. 

It’s not easy to stand out in an overly saturated art fair circuit, especially when competing against gargantuan enterprises like Art Basel and Frieze. Nonetheless, Art Jakarta 2025 was able to hold its own amid political precarity and a globally tanking economy, reporting modest but steady sales along with a stable 38,000-something visitors, comparable to last year’s edition. This year’s event exemplified the resilience and unwavering energy of Indonesia’s art landscape, underlining the fair’s status as an important, regionally-focused yet internationally-minded cultural platform within the Southeast Asian milieu.

Annette Meier is an assistant editor at ArtAsiaPacific.