Jakarta, the soon to be erstwhile capital city of Indonesia, is gearing up for its premier annual commercial art fair, Art Jakarta (AJ2024, 4–6 October). This year the fair will coincide with the opening week of the megalopolis’ own contemporary art biennial exhibition, Jakarta Biennale (1 October–15 November), which is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary in 2024. The concurrence of these two enormous events on the Indonesian art scene’s calendar is bound to create an even bigger buzz around Art Jakarta than in previous years, and it will be interesting to see how a third event—the recent soft opening of the new capital city, Ibu Kota Nusantara (IKN), in far-away Kalimantan—will be discussed.

Art Jakarta will again be held in the JIEXPO site in Kemayoran, a complex of massive exhibition and convention buildings fit for everything from mining industry conventions to toy fairs. And of course, Art Jakarta. The fair was held in JIEXPO for the first time in 2023, and as Chloe Ho and Eliza O’Donnell wrote earlier this year, its move to this dedicated exhibition space represented a maturation of its form, after its early years as Bazaar Art Jakarta. The late 2000s saw a proliferation of art fairs in Indonesia; Jogja Art Fair (now ArtJog) first appeared in 2008, already sporting the temporary artists façade for which it has become famous; Bazaar Art followed in Jakarta in 2009 and others have appeared across the archipelago. These two main art fairs have, however, evolved in different directions: ArtJog now resembles a major, curated annual exhibition more so than the distinctly commercial flavour of Art Jakarta, which this year will feature booths from 73 commercial galleries from across Southeast Asia and Indonesia. But a distinctly Indonesian approach is developing: AJ2024 will again present AJ SCENE, a section dedicated to artist collectives, studios, and projects. In 2023 this was the liveliest section of the fair, with collectives and artist-run initiatives from across Java gathering in small, dynamic booths, run by the artists themselves with frequent cross-pollination. It was part art fair and part hang-out space and impossible to pass through in ‘connoisseurial silence’.

Innovation is again on the agenda for AJ2024, with much anticipated art installations by artists such as Timoteus Anggawan Kusno and Tisna Sanjaya to be exhibited at AJ Spot, and further opportunities to view works from private university and museum collections through AJX collaborations. The range of artworks exhibited, from rarely seen modern masters through to edgy street art, is extended further with commissioned works supported by AJ’s Main Partners; painted refrigerators, shower karaoke, experimental technology and an old-fashioned silent auction fundraiser provide platforms for corporations to build their cultural capital in partnership with artists and the fair.

All is set for a massive weekend that showcases a curious mix of commercial and community, which art fairs in Indonesia excel at, and I will be there to join festivities as Art + Australia's 2024 Art Jakarta correspondent. Stay tuned for the post-event analysis.