Ade Darmawan

Indonesian Art Institute (ISI) - Graphic Art

1997 Solo Exhibition at Cemeti Contemporary Art Gallery; 2000 Co-Founder at ruangrupa; 2025 Director at ruangrupa

His art practices include installations, video, public art, object work, digital prints; he has also authored curatorial statements and essays entwined with his practice. His recent show Water Resistance reflects his engagement with environmental, extraction, and political themes in Indonesia. 2024

He was member of Jakarta Arts Council (2006–2009). Also he is an artistic director of Jakarta Biennale (from 2009 onward). He drives collective art education and cross-disciplinary experiments via ruangrupa’s programming, art labs, residencies, publications, urban interventions.

He is embedded in Indonesia’s independent arts networks. As leader of ruangrupa, he is connected with peer collectives, funders, institutional collaborators, residencies etc.

English

Art, writing, collective experimentation, urban research, collaboration across disciplines

He stated that it was when he and other artist started creating ruangrupa when he came back from his residency at Rijksakademie in the 2000's. He reflects on his shift toward collective practice, explaining that the environment after Reformasi (post-Suharto) and student activism shaped how he and his peers in art school began publishing, doing street projects, working in public spaces, which eventually led to founding ruangrupa (copyright: Art Asia Pacific & Black Star Fest)

success emerges from an institutional imagination rooted in collective practice: his international training (Rijksakademie), founding and sustaining ruangrupa as a durable artist collective, and consistently privileging collaborative frameworks (not individual authorship) allowed him to scale local, experimental practices into significant regional and global cultural projects (copyright: Dutch Art Institute & Japan Foundation).