Biophilia: Exquisite Corpse

14 February – 24 April 2026
ISA Art Gallery, Jakarta
 

As Biophilia: Exquisite Corpse enters its final weeks at ISA Art Gallery, this is a timely moment to experience the exhibition before it closes. Now in its second month, the exhibition continues to foreground environmental resistance through practices that engage ecology across activism, spirituality, and material transformation.

Biophilia is a biannual exhibition series by ISA Art Gallery dedicated to ecological discourse and resistance. This edition brings together nine artists including Arahmaiani, Dabi Arnasa, Anang Saptoto, Cynthia Delaney Suwito, Fitri DK, Kynan Tegar in collaboration with Studio Birthplace and Novo Amor, Mater Design Lab, Reza Kutjh, and Teguh Ostenrik. Drawing from the Surrealist method of collective image-making, Exquisite Corpse unfolds through layered and unexpected connections, forming a shared field of thought that reflects ecological interdependence. At its core, the exhibition considers how bodies and systems exist within an ecosystem shaped by ongoing violence and extraction. It asks how we continue to inhabit such a world while pointing toward the urgency of collective awareness and response.
 

A collaboration between Kynan Tegar, Studio Birthplace, and Novo Amor, Earth Defender unfolds as an art film centered on loss, resistance, and continuity. It follows a son who takes up his father’s struggle after he is killed defending his land from corporate extraction. Set against Novo Amor’s haunting score, the work reflects the Iban community’s ongoing commitment to protecting their ancestral lands. At its core, the film is a call to awareness and action, underscoring the urgent need for global support and policy change as environmental defenders continue to face violence, with one life lost every 48 hours in the protection of the world’s remaining wilderness. The film has received international recognition, including Best Music Video at HollyShorts Film Festival 2025, Gold for VFX at the Gong Awards 2025, and Silver for Best Ad of the Year at the Shots Asia Pacific Awards. It was also awarded a Bronze Pencil for Cinematography and a Merit Award for Visual Effects at The One Show Awards 2025, where it was additionally nominated for Cinematography. Further recognitions include nominations at the Berlin Commercial Awards and UK Music Video Awards, as well as a shortlist at Spikes Asia 2025.

Anang Saptoto’s Jimat Anti Tuyul turns toward everyday ecological relations embedded within domestic labour. Drawing from his long-term project Panen Apa Hari Ini (PARI), the work traces the history of his grandmother’s food stall and its cooking practices, revealing how knowledge is sustained through routine acts of exchange. The talisman, assembled from agricultural materials such as chili, garlic, pepper, and glass, links food production, belief, and economic survival. In this gesture, ecology is understood not as abstraction, but as a lived and relational system that extends beyond human-centred needs.

Cynthia Delaney Suwito’s work continues her Pottered Pots series through a large-scale installation shaped by repeated attempts to care for plants. Formed from an archive of pots once used to grow plants that did not survive, the work takes the shape of a vertical tower, replacing living matter with photographic traces. Referencing her background as an artist based in Singapore and the spatial logic of local high-density urban housing, the installation reflects on mediated forms of care and disconnection from the ground. What emerges is a quiet persistence, where growth is no longer organic, but reconstructed through repetition, memory, and substitution.

11 AM - 6 PM | Tuesdays - Saturdays
Closed on Sundays, Mondays & Public Holidays

Wisma 46 – Ground Floor
Jl. Jend. Sudirman No.Kav 1, Jakarta