An immersive art installation through a park. A butterfly dome. A pack of hybrid wolves roaming freely. These are some of the sights you’ll find in Nuanu Creative City, Bali’s newest futuristic site that melds creativity, culture and nature.
At the heart of the 44-hectare land sits Labyrinth Art Gallery, home to Art & Bali every September. The boutique art fair hosts over 300 artists, galleries and art spaces, running the gamut on Indonesian art all under one roof. One could get lost in the plethora of artworks, installations and sculptures found at every corner. Though most associate Yogyakarta as Indonesia’s art hub, its second-largest creative community is scattered across the bustling island of Bali.
This year’s edition is a continuation of the fair’s debut theme ‘Bridging Dichotomies’—an observation of the tension that rises between seemingly opposing concepts. Artworks on display walk a fine line between tradition and modernity, nature and technology and tradition and modernity.
Art & Bali’s flagship exhibition, What The Body Remembers, shines a spotlight on fashion, textiles and material culture through the lens of contemporary art. Led by Bandana Tewari, former editor-at-large of Vogue India, and fashion and art curator Brina Paska, the works of 26 designers and makers from India and Indonesia exhibit a shared premise: that the human touch found in textiles is a form of memory, revealing sacred whispers before language does.
“We want this dialogue to go beyond the superficial—it’s about exchange, a mutation of ideas, integrity, and always remembering the provenance,” Tewari elaborates. The exhibition reveals what is often forgotten—the fabric of stories that cloth carries. It traces the evolution of cloth, dye, weave and gesture, its survival through repetition over time, and how it has morphed and transformed into fashion as we know it at the present. Beyond glamour and aestheticism lies a connection that begins with an idea in the head, to a craft formed by hand, and imbued with emotion from the heart.
At Nuanu Future Talks, the fair’s fringe event, discourse sparked over a pertinent sartorial question that hovers over the industry today: when does fashion become art? Who holds the power to define so? In a post-colonial era where influence decreasingly derives from the West, friction rises as the region finds itself in a process of reclaiming its power. Where clothing is concerned, agency is eventually wielded by the wearer, according to Svida Alisjahbana, founder of Jakarta Fashion Week. “The body is the canvas. The context of the clothing’s culture and its artistic value is for anyone to love it. The wearer has the authority to carry its emotion and label it as art.”
Beyond its white sandy shores, trendy cafe spots and buzzy nightlife sits a hidden art community full of life. Art & Bali continues to be proof of that, a rising platform putting Bali on the creative world map.
