Organised for the first time in 1974, Jakarta Biennale is the oldest visual art biennale in Indonesia and is renowned as the flagship of the Jakarta Arts Council. This year’s theme of the Jakarta Biennale was Maximum City: Survive of Escape? And consisted of several sub themes: Violence and resistance, Narcissism, Voyeurism, and the Body: Game, Leisure and Gadget Victim: Metro- Text Seductions: Citizen and Homo Ludens.
Jet Pascua, title of work: Excessive Delicacy
”Violence is a man, re-creating himself” – Franz Fanon.
Jet tells the Embassy that his work “Excessive Delicacy” alludes to Fine-dining, Etiquette, Upper Class, Being Proper and that these are some of the things associated with the use of forks. Historically, forks were thought to have originated in ancient Greece and slowly spread across Europe between the 11th to the 18th Centuries. It was brought to the East by the Western Colonizers, and in countries such as the Philippines, it has become a regular part of every meal after almost 400 years of Spanish and American Colonization.
Jet makes reference to Fanon who wrote about the Colonized mind and how the imprint leaves a lasting effect and the most difficult thing to heal in colonized cultures. Fanon also wrote how colonized people start behaving and speaking like their colonizers in order to please them and feel important themselves. Jet thinks that even though Fanon was writing about colonized Africa, it also applies to other cultures.
More than 110 artists from Indonesia and abroad participated at the Biennale and hundreds of people attended the exhibition. Curators and press from the international community attended in addition to many locals. Jet points to the fact that there is a focus on South East Asian art today, and that the Biennale is still very important in showing what is happening in the region today.
Jet tells the Embassy that he received a lot of positive reactions on his work and that it was featured in several blogs as one of the favourite works.
About Jet Pascua
Jet Pascua is a graduate of the Academy of Fine Art Bergen, Norway; Royal Academy of Fine Art, Oslo, and University of the Philippines. His works are in the form of paintings, drawings, video, installation, and performance art.