ISA November Newsletter 2025

WHAT’S ON ISA ART GALLERY IN NOVEMBER, 2025

 

UPCOMING

 

'Hoarse Horse'

 

ISA Art Gallery is proud to present HOARSE HORSE, a solo exhibition featuring the works of Ida Lawrence, with an accompanying curatorial film by Monika Proba. In HOARSE HORSE, Ida Lawrence brings together a cast of creatures. Stylish foxes, guarded birds of prey and raspy equines flock together in her latest series of wild story-paintings at ISA Art Gallery. The exhibition offers a window into Lawrence’s painting instincts: image, narrative and the joy of language intertwine through gesture and rhythm. Her worlds are playful yet uneasy, where humour and tension coexist in vibrant colour. Enter at your own risk! Hand sanitiser provided.

ISA Art Gallery, Wisma 46

20th September - 6th November 2025

 

ISA Art Gallery presents Conjunction of Drones, featuring the works of A. Sebastianus, Ari Bayuaji, Audya Amalia, Dian Mayang, Jumaadi, Kristoffer Ardeña, Sarita Ibnoe, Widi Pangestu, and Samuel Xun.

 

The collective explores rhythm, repetition, and materiality, using the drone as a metaphor for persistence, memory, and the tension between control and surrender. Often seen as intrusive, drones here reveal vulnerability and a liminal space between action and observation. The exhibition highlights artists working with fibers and organic materials, where traditional techniques meet contemporary urgencies like ecological precarity and identity. In this convergence, materials themselves become carriers of memory, linking past, present, and future.

 

 

 

World Trade Center 3 Jakarta

29 September 2025 – 9 January 2026

 

Sekar Kawung is a social enterprise dedicated to reviving Nusantara’s textile traditions. It is a system of knowledge shaped by ecology, farming cycles, and collective labor. In Tuban, weaving and batik are inseparable from agricultural philosophy, marking identity, ritual, and solidarity while embodying balance between humans and nature.

 

Believing that textile culture is a form of agroecology, which sustains harmony between people and nature while opening pathways for regenerative economies, Sekar Kawung draws on long-term research and archives, including Rens Heringa’s notes on Tuban’s farming and textile practices, to revive these traditions through contemporary works. Through exhibitions on Tenun Gedog and Batik Tuban, it invites reflection on clothing as a holistic value system. In Tuban, weaving always precedes batik-making. This is a metaphor for interlacing past virtues with the present and future, reminding us that clothing can guide us toward more grounded, sustainable, and resilient ways of living.

 

This month’s artist highlight features Hadassah Emmerich, whose practice unfolds across painting, mural, and installation to explore ornament as a vessel of cultural hybridity, memory, and desire. Drawing from Indonesian Batik, Art Deco, and advertising aesthetics, her work treats ornament as both seduction and critique. Through a distinctive transfer technique using hand-cut stencils and layered pigments, Emmerich creates richly textured surfaces where the sensual and the political, the personal and the collective, continuously intertwine.

 

Her forthcoming projects include large-scale mural commissions at Erasmus University Rotterdam (December 2025) and Kunstmuseum The Hague (February 2026), alongside her participation in Nostalgic Landscapes, Contingent Futures at Wei-Ling Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, curated by Paco Barragán. Recent and ongoing presentations include Epicurean Eden at EMST – National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, a commissioned painting for Louis Vuitton’s Schiphol Airport store presented in collaboration with Galerie Ron Mandos, and her inclusion in Painting after Painting at S.M.A.K., Ghent, on view until the end of this month.

ISA Art Gallery is delighted to share Arahmaiani and Ines Katamso’s participation in Thresholds, a group exhibition at White Cube Hong Kong. Curated by Galuh Sukardi and bringing together nine contemporary artists whose practices are rooted in or connected to Indonesia, Thresholds explores cycles of life, death, and transformation through the lens of ritual, spirituality, and reincarnation.

 

Preview | 30 October 2025, 5–8 PM

11 AM - 7 PM | Tuesdays - Saturdays

Closed on Sundays and Mondays

50 Connaught Road Central
Hong Kong

 

LUH'DE GITA 

 

 

UOB Painting of the Year 2025 Finalist

ASHTA District 8

 

ISA Art Gallery warmly congratulates Luh’de Gita, who has been selected as a finalist in the Established Artist Category of the UOB Painting of the Year (Indonesia) competition with her work Signed in Smoke, Sealed in Silence #1. Her inclusion in this year’s lineup, highlights her growing presence within Indonesia’s contemporary art landscape. Organized by UOB Indonesia, the annual competition continues to serve as an important platform for artistic reflection and exchange across Southeast Asia.

 

ISA ARTIST ON THE MOVE

ARAHMAIANI & INES KATAMSO

 

 

Small is Beautiful

Flowers Gallery, London

21st November 2025 - 3rd January 2026

 

Featuring Sinta Tantra, represented by ISA Art Gallery, Flowers Gallery presents the 43rd edition of its acclaimed exhibition Small is Beautiful, on view at the Cork Street gallery and online. Since its inception in 1974, the annual showcase has invited contemporary artists from diverse disciplines to create works within a set scale — each measuring no larger than 7 x 9 inches. Tantra will be presenting two new works, Aether Glow (2025) and Light Offering (2025).

11AM - 6PM | Monday - Saturday

Closed on Sundays

21 Cork St, London

W1S 3LZ, United Kingdom