Printing the Printed

Artists: Agus Suwage, Syahrizal Pahlevi, Nurdian Ichsan, R.E.Hartanto, Theresia Agustina Sitompul (Terre), Mariam Sofrina, Rusyan Yasin

A fictional manuscript anchors the Indonesian Pavilion: Printing the Unprinted—The Grand Voyage. Attributed to Datu Na Tolu Hamonangan—an imagined archivist, artist, astronomer, and legal theorist of the Harajaon Pusuk Buhit—this narrative centers on a 15th-century Sumatran kingdom celebrated for its maritime technology, astronomy, trade, governance, and artistry. The manuscript narrates a 14-year voyage from 1472 to 1486, beginning at Lake Toba, tracing the West Sumatran coast, passing through Malacca, crossing the Bay of Bengal, and continuing past Gujarat, Hormuz, the Red Sea, and Alexandria before culminating in Venice and Central Europe. Three ships undertake this journey: Siboru Deak Parujar, named for the Batak Goddess of Creation, serves as the mothership; Naga Padoha, the Cosmic Serpent, acts as escort; Sahala ni Ombak, the Wave Spirit, is devoted to scientific discovery. Collectively, these vessels symbolize inquiry rather than conquest. They venture outward to observe, record, and understand—not to claim territory.

To realize the exhibition, the artists participated in a residency at the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica. Interaction and collaboration during this period transformed the Indonesian Pavilion into a "living laboratory"—a metaphorical space for experimentation and collective exploration. Rather than simply displaying established cultural production from Indonesia, the Pavilion becomes a dynamic site of inquiry. Here, artists create in unfamiliar conditions, alongside colleagues from diverse backgrounds, in a city whose layered history and contradictions permeate their work.

Agus Suwage (b. 1959) using painting, drawing, printmaking, and mixed media, Agus Suwage’s practice questions identity under regimes of power and representation, using his own face as both object and subject. Syarizal Pahlevi (b. 1965)  works in woodcut and direct printing, drawing on everyday objects and vernacular culture to expose how power and ideology operate through ordinary visual forms. Nurdian Ichsan (b. 1971) uses clay as a contemporary medium to question identity, spirituality, and collective memory. R.E. Hartanto (b. 1973) utilizes realist portraiture to investigate the intersection of human psychology, biological impulse, and social structures. Theresia Agustina Sitompul (b. 1981) uses and expands printmaking to question gender roles, colonial inheritance, and the invisibility of women’s labor. Mariam Sofrina (b. 1983) is known for her photorealistic landscapes and cityscapes, using light and detail to evoke nostalgia, uncertainty, and unstable logic, challenging the accuracy of photography and reality. Rusyan Yasin (b. 1994) uses drawing and travel sketching to document space, memory, and displacement.

Central to the Pavilion's approach is the use of fiction—not as fabrication or evasion, but as a rigorous epistemological method. This distinction is crucial. Fiction as a curatorial strategy does not dismiss truth; rather, it exposes how truths—those accepted as fact—are shaped by authority. Official histories are always subjective, shaped by institutions and exclusionary norms, and frequently omit divergent forms of knowledge. Here, fiction interrogates these boundaries without evading scholarly rigor.

The Pavilion proposes a reorientation of the relationship between artistic practice, institutional structure, and the circumstances in which both unfold. The interventions made in Venice in 2026 will not resolve the crises that frame them. Yet, they will stand as evidence—durable, material, and publicly legitimate—that encounter remains possible, that knowledge can still be generated through proximity and shared creation, and that the record remains open. The essential question is how this reorientation is achieved; the answer lies not in selecting different objects, but in artists forging a new relationship to the act of making itself.

Printing the Unprinted invites us to imagine an alternative history—one in which artistic practice is inseparable from inquiry, and fiction is wielded as a tool for critical engagement. By foregrounding collaboration, experimentation, and the productive tension between fact and imagination, the Indonesian Pavilion transforms the act of making into an open-ended voyage. It is a reminder that within every record lies the potential for new knowledge, and that the journey of understanding—like the Grand Voyage itself—is never truly complete.