Life As I Know It: Emte and the Liberating Solitude
Emte has published an illustrated book titled Life As I Know It and opened a solo exhibition under the same name at dia.lo.gue gallery in Jakarta, running from 16 July to 17 August 2025. This book is a continuation of Life As We Know It, published by Gramedia in 2023. While the first book focused on observations of urban life, Life As I Know It draws from personal experience.
In this solo exhibition, Emte invites viewers to wander through unfamiliar city streets, to discover encounters and conversations that can only happen when we travel alone. He titled his exhibition statement Alone, Together: A Handy Guide to Solitude (with Pictures!). Emte believes in the new things we can encounter on our personal journeys. Being alone, for him, is not a sad story or a problem to be solved. For many people, it can be a liberating experience.
Emte, or Mohammad Taufiq, was born in Indonesia in 1979. He is a self-taught artist who grew up and works in Jakarta. As a child, he was constantly drawing on books and walls. He later studied Visual Communication Design at the Jakarta Institute of the Arts. Over more than two decades, he has developed a diverse artistic practice that includes comics, magazine illustrations, music album covers, merchandise, and paintings. His work draws from music, pop culture, humor, and everyday urban life. He mainly works with watercolor, using an approach that relies on spontaneity and the unpredictable nature of the medium.
Emte’s work has been shown in both domestic and international exhibitions. He has participated in Art Jakarta (2015, 2017, 2019), Unknown Asia in Japan (2018), London Book Fair (2019), and several group shows in Australia, the United States, and Canada. In 2024, he held a solo exhibition in Germany. He has published several zines and graphic novels, including Nyampah (2016), Gugug! (2018), and Life As We Know It (2023).
Life As I Know It contains over 250 watercolor illustrations. All of them depict daily activities done alone: eating, watching films, attending concerts, walking around, traveling, or just staying at home. None of the images include narration or text. “For me, doing things alone is not strange or sad. I’m happy and enjoy it,” said Emte. He doesn’t view solitude as a form of isolation. To him, if someone can enjoy their own company, the presence of others becomes more meaningful.
Inside the exhibition space, visitors are greeted by Emte’s raw hand-drawn sketches taped directly to the walls. Most of them are attached with colored tape that gives a distinct texture and unfinished feel, while some are framed behind glass. In the first room, personal archives are displayed: brushes, cut-out illustrations, books, and photo prints laid out inside vitrines. Emte groups his sketches under specific themes, each marked with particular color palettes and experimentation in strokes, forms, and panels.
He acknowledges the challenge of communicating purely through images. Still, he believes that the experience of living alone is widely shared, especially in big cities. Without needing to explain anything in words, he hopes viewers can connect with or recognize similar experiences when seeing his illustrations.
All of the illustrations featured in the book are also presented in the solo exhibition at dia.lo.gue. Engel Tanzil, Co-Founder of dia.lo.gue, explained that this collaboration aligns with the gallery’s mission to support art, design, and culture. She hopes visitors will get a glimpse into how illustration develops from early stages, through everyday experiences, childhood memories, and ways of observing surroundings.
Alongside the exhibition, there will be a talk and a workshop with the artist, open to the public. More information is available via Instagram at @emteemte and @dialogue_arts. The exhibition is free and open to the public. On weekdays, it runs from 11:00 to 20:00 and on weekends from 08:00 to 20:00. The book Life As I Know It is available at the dia.lo.gue shop, at all Gramedia stores, and through Gramedia’s online marketplace.
