At the 2026 Jakarta Biennale, visitors can plant cassava in moist soil. An evocative soundscape, including the calls of threatened birds-of-paradise, fills the air. Paintings made with natural pigments on tree bark hang on the walls.

The installation by Papua-based artist collective Alyakha Kolektif draws attention to illegal gold mining and excessive logging that are damaging the environment in Indonesia’s Sentani region. The cassava planting, which continues until late October, is intended as a gesture of hope.

That gesture feels particularly timely as thick grey haze, fuelled by forest fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan, continues to blanket Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, with air quality hitting hazardous levels.

“The biennale is themed ‘Kebal’, which is like when you feel so much pain that soon you don’t feel it any more,” says programme director Ayu Maulani, who explains that the Bahasa word roughly translates as “immune” or “resistant”. “It’s about how the people of Indonesia are trying to survive amid state policies that do not serve their interests.”Organised by Majelis Jakarta, a coalition of art collectives, the event opened on October 4 and runs until November 24 at venues across the Indonesian capital, including the Taman Ismail Marzuki arts complex.

Across town, a very different art event concluded the same weekend the biennale opened. In contrast to the biennale’s gritty, DIY vibe, the contemporary art fair Art Jakarta offered a polished, commercial presentation of works by artists from Southeast Asia and elsewhere.

Together, the two events showcase the diversity and dynamism of the contemporary art scene in the world’s largest city.

Dating back to 1974, the Jakarta Biennale features more than 30 contemporary artists this year. Many of the works confront environmental and sociopolitical issues affecting communities across Indonesia.

Yogyakarta-based artist Fitri DK’s installation of clay pots, straw hats and black batik fabric, for instance, depicts female indigenous Javanese farmers from Kendeng, who protested plans for a cement factory by encasing their feet in cement outside Jakarta’s Presidential Palace in 2016.

Upstairs, Arifa Safura’s installation of shrouded mannequins pays tribute to women in Aceh, Sumatra, who live under strict sharia law.

Among the most powerful works is (2026), a fabric installation featuring poignant portraits of refugees printed on draped sheets. Video footage and poetic text written by refugees are projected across the cloth.

The work was created by The Archipelago, a collective that includes Hassan Ati and Shams Najafi, Hazara refugees from Afghanistan now based in Indonesia.

Ati, who took the portraits, likens being a refugee to a bird trapped in a room: able to see freedom through the glass but unable to escape. The thin fabric, which creates a barrier of sorts, echoes this idea.

Najafi recorded the video footage, which includes scenes of protesters camping outside the Jakarta headquarters of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

A member of the persecuted Hazara minority, Najafi fled Afghanistan as a teenager. He flew to India, then in 2014 travelled by boat from Malaysia to Indonesia, where he spent three and a half years in a detention centre. In 2025, he founded a Montessori school for refugee children while continuing his art practice.

“We tried to show the resilience of refugees,” Ati says. “We made this artwork so the audience can see there are people from other nations living in Jakarta who are struggling.”Just as the biennale captures the urgent sociopolitical anxieties of contemporary Indonesia, Art Jakarta’s commercial activity has also been affected by major geopolitical events.

“The whole world is on tenterhooks with what’s happening in the Middle East,” says Jasdeep Sandhu, founder of Gajah Gallery, which has spaces in Singapore, Jakarta and Yogyakarta. “We’re just happy to be doing as well as we did last year.”At the gallery’s booth, where works were priced up to US$50,000, early sales included pieces by Indonesian artists Erizal As, Mangu Putra and Tantin Udiantara.

This year’s fair, held from October 2 to 4 at Jakarta International Expo, drew nearly 42,000 visitors – about 4 per cent more than last year. It featured more accessible price points and a strong showing of emerging artists.

“The fair’s definitely very dynamic,” says Singapore-based collector Rafiq Mohamad. “I appreciate the intimacy of scale and friendly price point [of the works].”More than half of the fair’s 75 galleries were local. The 33 international exhibitors included several first-time participants, such as PhD Group from Hong Kong, Tokyo-based Misako & Rosen and SNA Arts Management from Phnom Penh.

SNA Arts Management’s booth featured (2024), a striking video performance by Cambodian artist Khvay Samnang in which he sits shirtless, pounding brass plates in the baking sun for three days in landscapes across Cambodia.

Indonesian stalwarts Roh Projects and Ara Contemporary had some of the largest booths. Ara sold about 70 per cent of the works on display, including a woven print by Netherlands-based artist Nazif Lopulissa for US$18,000. Indonesian collector Abigail Hakim also bought a delicate work by Thai artist Alisa Chunchue from the gallery priced at US$2,500.

Part of the series (2026), the small work features red glass drops resembling blood affixed to stainless steel.

Hakim plans to display the work in the private viewing space of her South Jakarta office. It houses more than 50 works from her East meets West-themed collection.

The space includes works ranging from a playful, digitally manipulated photograph of Indonesian statesman and former president Sukarno with Marilyn Monroe, by Indonesian artist Agan Harahap, to sculptures made from human hair, by Thai artist Imhathai Suwatthanasilp.

According to Art Jakarta fair director Tom Tandio, Hakim is part of a wider trend of Indonesian collectors building exhibition spaces in their homes or offices, where they often host fellow art enthusiasts.

Hakim has also noticed younger collectors becoming more engaged. She credits initiatives such as the One Piece Club (OPC), which she wishes had existed when she began collecting.

OPC Indonesia, co-founded by veteran art patron Melani W. Setiawan and fellow collector Tandio, organises trips to art fairs and visits to private collections.

“I’m seeing younger collectors becoming more serious now,” Hakim says. “Maybe in a few years, we will be visiting their collections.”