 continues to stand as a vital crossroad where creativity meets conscience.mamo){kind=link}
Fifteen years on, the Indonesian Contemporary Art & Design (ICAD) continues to stand as a vital crossroad where creativity meets conscience.mamo
This year’s edition, titled “Earth Society” reflected a growing urgency — a call to reconsider how art and design respond to, and coexist with, the living systems around us.
At its core, ICAD 15’s “Earth Society” is both a meditation and an experiment. With a focus on Southeast Asia, it gathers artists, designers, architects, scientists, and thinkers to collectively confront the environmental and socio-political realities of our time. From climate crisis and land exploitation to displacement and war, the exhibition refuses to treat these issues as distant abstractions. Instead, it translates them into tangible, participatory encounters, urging audiences to reflect, and perhaps, to act.
This year, ICAD 15 brought together more than 50 participants — artists and designers from Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan, Egypt, France, and the United States — reflecting the exhibition’s expanding global dialogue. Their works were presented across five categories: Special Appearance, In Focus, Featured, Collaborations, and Open Call, and among the most talked-about showcases was that of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY), Indonesia’s sixth president, who presented five paintings inspired by his deep reflection on life, nature, and humanity. His participation added a contemplative, personal dimension to “Earth Society”, bridging political legacy with artistic introspection.
The exhibition has grown from being a platform for aesthetic innovation into an inclusive cross-disciplinary dialogue that combines art and science, climate activism, technology, and local knowledge. Visitors were not mere spectators but participants in a living dialogue, one that has evolved through interaction and shared reflection.
Ultimately, “Earth Society” was less about offering answers and more about cultivating attentiveness. As the ICAD 15 curatorial team put it, the exhibition has been “the starting point toward meaningful change” — not the end of a process. More than marking this shift, ICAD 15 gently nudged us to reimagine coexistence, not as a utopian vision, but as a continuous act of listening, adapting, and envisioning — together.
