Pressing Pressure and the Extension of Graphics in Today's Social Context
After the exhibition has concluded, there is one particular thing that remains worth reflecting on from the exhibition Pressing Pressure: Tertekan, Tercetak, Tersebar (Pressed, Printed, Dispersed), organized by Krack! alongside Elia Nurvista as co-curator. This exhibition uses printmaking techniques as an analogy to interpret multiple issues simultaneously through the practices of Bakudapan Food Study Group, Gilang Propagila, Pangestumu, and Ruang MES 56.
The title carries two meanings regarding pressure. The first is inherent to the printing process itself—the pressure of a squeegee, a machine, or a hand transferring an image from one surface to another. The second comes from outside the studio. Economic conditions, food issues, ecological crises, political situations, resource limitations, and everyday experiences compel people to speak up and find ways to convey their messages. This kind of pressure does not always culminate in limitation, as it also gives birth to tactics. When tools are limited, people use whatever is available. When information must move quickly, images are simplified so they can be easily reproduced. When formal spaces are out of reach, posters move to the streets, stickers adhere to everyday objects, and publications pass from hand to hand.
The history of print in Indonesia exhibits the same pattern. There was propaganda during the Japanese occupation, the dissemination of ideas during the struggle for independence, down to the posters, leaflets, photocopies, stickers, banners, and t-shirts that mobilized alongside demonstrations and citizen movements leading up to the Reformasi era. From here, the exhibition draws its interest toward the vernacular nature of print, where images adapt to the available tools, needs, and circumstances, then move fluidly between art and everyday life.
The four practices in the exhibition demonstrate this nature in different ways. Gilang Propagila presents a graphic practice that grows alongside grassroots citizen activities. Through Punk Pangan, which began during the pandemic, stickers, posters, banners, flyers, and t-shirts became part of food-sharing initiatives, while simultaneously bringing issues of food access and state responsibility into a broader public arena. Bakudapan Food Study Group, through Hunger Tales, transforms the same issue into a board game. Players assume various positions within the food system and confront prices, distribution, policies, as well as structural inequalities. Here, print becomes a tool for playing and sharing knowledge.
Pangestumu uses the repetition of police and military figure stencils to discuss the increasing normalization of security forces' presence in civilian spaces. One figure appears, then multiplies, until their existence gradually becomes part of the scenery. Ruang MES 56 takes a different direction by returning to analog photography and darkroom printing with the residents of Nitiprayan. Cameras are used to observe the environment surrounding Krack! and question what is deemed important enough to be recorded. A house, a warung (small shop), a tree, a peeling poster, or simple everyday events can become an archive that grows from how the residents view their own neighborhood.
When these last two practices are read side-by-side, an interesting thread emerges. Pangestumu’s stencils show how something that initially feels anomalous becomes ordinary through constant presence. The work of Ruang MES 56 asks an adjacent question from the opposite side: what has long been considered too ordinary to even be recorded?
The public programs draw these ideas back to the working process. MES 56, together with the Nitiprayan youth group Uyel-Uyelan, held a workshop titled "Recording: Images that (Once) Lived in Nitiprayan Village." Participants strolled through the neighborhood, listened to stories about sites and events in Nitiprayan, recorded them with analog cameras, and then returned to Krack! to print the photos they took. Additionally, Pangestumu held a stencil workshop to open up the process and possibilities of image reproduction through simple techniques. Throughout the exhibition, visitors could also play Hunger Tales with Bakudapan, free of charge with prior registration.
These public programs are a reflection of print as a collective endeavor. Walking, recording, printing, stenciling, and playing are actions that anyone can do, and perhaps it is here that the vernacular nature discussed by the curators is felt most strongly.
Krack! states that this exhibition does not attempt to dictate what counts as print art and what does not. It aims to see what happens when an image is placed under pressure, reproduced, and then released into the world. After the exhibition concludes, the remaining question is where these images will move next, and who will find them.
