Presentation of ruangrupa, collective-curator of documenta 15

Institute of Contemporary Art – Sofia / Goethe-Institut Bulgarien

Presentation of

Reza Afisina and Iswanto Hartono
from ruangrupa, collective-curator of documenta 15, 2022 in Kassel

within the project “Close Encounters: Visual Dialogues”; School4Artists (Part Two – Back2School)

Friday, November 8th, 2019, 6 pm
Goethe-Institut Bulgarien, 1 Budapest Str., Sofia

The artists-curators Reza Afisina and Iswanto Hartono from Indonesia will be presenting the vision of ruangrupa – the collective curator of the next documenta 15 in 2022, about collaborative work that is defined by the values of equality, sharing, solidarity, friendship, and togetherness; about their current projects; as well as about the early ideas concerning documenta 15 in 2022.

“We will be presenting, or rather – decompressing the artistic process of ruangrupa in the last 19 years, in its direct relation with the daily art practices in the context of Jakarta, Indonesia. We will also give a notion about how we are positioning identity within the frames of a collective of artists, as well as a part of our individual approaches as artists, as related to the necessity for us to exist as part of the larger Jakarta community. We will make an introduction into our ideas for space as a form and a place in which we participate by distributing knowledge and experience.”
Iswanto Hartono (b. 1972, Indonesia)
Reza Afisina (b. 1977, Indonesia)

As individual artists and as part of the ruangrupa, Iswanto Hartono and Reza Afisina have participated in numerous national and international exhibitions, projects and workshops. With ruangrupa as collective artistic platform, they have taken part in the biennials in: Gwangju, South Korea (2002, 2018); Istanbul (2005); Singapore (2011); the Asia-Pacific Triennial in Brisbane, Australia (2012); Sao Paulo (2014); and in Cosmopolis #1, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2017); They have co-curated TRANSaction: Sonsbeek International in Arnhem, the Netherlands (2016). As ruangrupa they are the Artistic Director of documenta 15 in 2022 in Kassel, Germany.

ruangrupa (always written in lowercase and without spaces) is a contemporary art organization and artists’ collective, founded in 2000 by a group of artists in Jakarta, Indonesia. As a non-profit organization, ruangrupa is active in promoting the advancement of art ideas in the urban context and the broad scope of culture through exhibitions, festivals, art laboratories, workshops, research, and publishing books, magazines and online journals. In its development, ruangrupa evolved into a collective of contemporary art and ecosystem studies with two other organizations that presented public learning spaces that carried the values ​​of equality, sharing, solidarity, friendship and togetherness.

Now, together with other art collectives in Jakarta, they have formed the ecosystem of collective studies of contemporary art called GudSkul, also part of ruangrupa’s Arts Laboratory division and subjects for collective study. ruangrupa’s Arts Laboratory (ArtLab) focuses on giving a space for research and creative/artistic collaboration for individual artists or groups, and for people from other disciplines and backgrounds to work together through specific research and collaboration that involve artists from Indonesia and abroad.

This event is organized in partnership with the Goethe-Institut Bulgarien and with the financial support of the Program “Culture-2019” of the Sofia Municipality.