The Paper Menagerie: at Omah Budoyo Yogyakarta

The Paper Menagerie Exhibition explores the paradoxical nature of paper—at once fragile and resilient, temporary yet archival. First shown in Jakarta and now brought to Yogyakarta, the exhibition features 19 artists, from emerging talents to established names, who expand the possibilities of paper as a medium. Their works transform paper through cutting, folding, layering, and sculpting, revealing its capacity to carry memory, resistance, and personal histories.

Rooted in ancient papermaking traditions, from Chinese origins to Southeast Asian materials like daluang and saa—paper has always held cultural and political weight. Beyond writing and documentation, it has served as a tool for storytelling and resistance, from Javanese manuscripts to protest posters.

Inspired by Ken Liu’s short story The Paper Menagerie, the exhibition reflects on identity, cultural memory, and loss. Liu’s tale of a mother breathing life into origami for her son—only for those symbols to be forgotten over time, echoes how paper preserves meaning yet can also be easily destroyed or erased.

In this spirit, The Paper Menagerie invites viewers to reconsider paper not just as a material, but as a vessel of emotion, memory, and transformation, an archive of what might otherwise vanish, waiting to be re-read and remembered.