Jagad Gallery, located in Wisma Geha, Jakarta in collaboration with Sekolah Seni Tubaba, presented Beyond Elasticity: Rubber and Materiality from 17 May to 30 June 2024 at Jagad Gallery, Menteng. The exhibition brought together twelve artists—Agus Suwage, Ausapati, Catur Nugroho, Dolorosa Sinaga, Elyezer, Handiwirman, Iwan Yusuf, Maharani Mancanegara, Septian Harriyoga, Suvi Wahyudianto, Titarubi, and Yuli Prayitno—whose practices span generations and approaches within Indonesian contemporary art.
The exhibition emerged from an artist residency programme in Tubaba (Tulang Bawang Barat), Lampung, where the participating artists were invited to work with natural rubber as their primary material. Liquid latex and rubber sheets were explored not merely as technical substances, but as carriers of form, content, and context—often combined with other materials to expand their expressive possibilities.
Within the discourse of contemporary art, Beyond Elasticity engaged with questions of rematerialisation, positioning material presence as a counterpoint to the dematerialisation associated with conceptual art. In a post-medium condition, rubber functioned as an active agent: shaping artistic language while simultaneously embedding social, historical, and political references within the works themselves.
Context played a crucial role throughout the exhibition. Rubber, as a plantation commodity in Indonesia, carries a layered history tied to transmigration policies, labour, and fluctuating economies. In Tubaba, rubber cultivation expanded significantly from the 1970s onward, once promising economic stability before entering a period of decline. Today, many small-scale farmers face shrinking incomes and rising production costs—realities that quietly underpin the artistic explorations presented in the gallery.
As articulated by Umar Ahmad, Regent of Tubaba from 2017 to 2022, the initiative was rooted in an effort to gather and reflect upon “small, scattered stories” surrounding rubber—stories shared by farmers, collectors, and artists alike. A pivotal early moment was Catur Nugroho’s large-scale painting using rubber sheets as its primary surface, marking the beginning of a collaborative exploration that connected artistic practice with lived experience.
The subsequent residency in Tubaba deepened this exchange. While artists such as Catur Nugroho and Suvi Wahyudianto were already familiar with the local context through their involvement with Sekolah Seni Tubaba, the participation of artists including Agus Suwage, Anusapati, Dolorosa Sinaga, Elyezer, Handiwirman, Iwan Yusuf, Maharani Mancanegara, Septian Harriyoga, Titarubi, and Yuli Prayitno expanded the range of perspectives and artistic responses.
Across the exhibition, rubber revealed its inherent elasticity not only in physical terms, but also in meaning. It appeared as structure and skin, as metaphor and memory—simultaneously industrial and organic, resilient and vulnerable. The works resisted singular readings, instead unfolding as layered reflections on materiality, labour, and the shifting conditions of contemporary life.
Through Beyond Elasticity: Rubber and Materiality, Jagad Gallery and Sekolah Seni Tubaba presented an exhibition that positioned material as a site of critical inquiry. Here, rubber moved beyond its identity as a commodity or industrial resource, becoming a medium through which histories are revisited, social realities examined, and new artistic possibilities articulated within the evolving landscape of Indonesian contemporary art.
