No Lunch Today: EDSU house and their Refusal of the White Cube
Claimed as a “white cube”, the use of a gallery space is determined by an orchestration of its whiteness, where beauty is produced through structures of neatness, neutrality and pleasantry. This arrangement produces a fixed account of meaning through a neatly arranged curation of materials and materialities of artworks, favouring aesthetic preservation over cultural, political and social urgencies. Here, artists, curators and those involved in production hold power to command the visitors’ line of sight, and their perception and presence. In the gallery, art commands attention, and oftentimes offers an escape from our realities. Aesthetics, then, becomes more than a subject matter, but a system of architecture – that perpetuates evasion. Amidst the pressing matters of today’s political landscape, can we ask whether it is possible to imagine a rupture of these systems?
EDSU house presents “Tidak Ada Makan Siang Hari Ini” (translated as No Lunch Today) as an attempt to answer, and question the function of a gallery space and the presentation of an “aesthetic” (read: aesthetic can be defined beyond its fixation to the philosophical context, and include its present resonance as a term to associate with beauty amongst Indonesians). The exhibition subverts the polished character of “art” that is in proximity with institutionalised standards, and reclaims an identity that is intimate to Jogjakartan urban-life by bringing together a group of artists whose practices are rooted in street art (praktik jalanan): Begok Oner, Digie Sigit, Media Legal, Neus One, Pangestumu, Riski Reas, Sicovecas, and Tuyuloeme.
The exhibition’s title embodies a collective intent to question the relations that constitute the typical functioning in a gallery, specifically by rejecting the promise of pleasantry expected in a visitor’s experience. They proclaim Makan Siang (translated as lunch) as a metaphor that is indicative of how “visual comfort” is given and almost organic to conventional gallery spaces – and reject the expectation to heed this offering.
In EDSU house, the artists and organisers invite viewers to experience art, rather than to just “see” it. Visitors become witnesses to an evolving process of creation intimate to the histories of street art in Jogjakarta, and their personal interactions with the city. These artists pay homage to both the lineage of their practices, as well as the city’s daily rhythms. Thus, the gallery, is then, a collective reimagination of Jogjakarta; forming Tidak Ada Makan Siang Hari Ini as a site of entanglements and recontextualisation between the artists, the gallery-as-an-institution and the public.
In this sense, Tidak Ada Makan Siang Hari Ini does not simply reject the conventions of the gallery, but exposes their fragility. By unsettling the expectation of comfort and visual consumption, the exhibition repositions the gallery as a site of friction rather than retreat. The question then is not only whether rupture is possible, but how long it can be sustained and whether such gestures remain momentary disruptions, or can reconfigure the conditions through which art is encountered and lived.
