The artist collective ruangrupa
Shaping art, culture and society together
One of the many special aspects of documenta is that a new artistic director has been appointed for every exhibition since 1972. At documenta fifteen, ruangrupa is the first to take on this role as a group of artists and other creative minds. The Indonesia-based art collective, founded in 2000, runs an art space in Jakarta and has made a name for itself on the international stage due to its communal organization of art projects and numerous publications.
For documenta fifteen, ruangrupa has developed a concept that consistently sustains the idea of collective action and is based on the principles of friendship, solidarity and community. “We want to create a globally aligned, cooperative and interdisciplinary art and culture platform that remains in effect beyond the 100 days of documenta fifteen. Our curatorial approach aims to achieve a different, community-oriented model of resource utilization – in economic terms, but also with regard to ideas, knowledge, programs and innovations.”
The basis for this concept is the Indonesian term lumbung, which can be translated as “rice barn.” It refers to a communal building where the surplus harvest is stored as a collective resource and distributed according to jointly agreed criteria. Applied to documenta fifteen, lumbung describes a kind of pooled resource fund that serves as the basis for the collaborative organization of the exhibition. ruangrupa selects international initiatives as lumbung members to broaden the collective and actively participate in the development of documenta. It is an extraordinary concept that is generating a great deal of interest for an exciting and diverse documenta in the summer of 2022.
