Contemporary Indonesian art is usually seen as beginning in 1975 with the Indonesian New Art Movement, which again brought social concerns to the forefront of art. These artists used installation, in particular, as well as performance, to make specific political comments on contemporary events, which challenged official orthodoxies, particularly concerning exploitative economic development and the destruction of traditional farming and ways
of life. Japanese academic Akira Tatehata, writing in the catalogue of the exhibition Asian Modernism: diverse developments in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand, describes the emergence in the 1970s of a new direction in Indonesian art as ‘a movement of young artists from Yogyakarta and Bandung organised in protest against the judging of the Second Jakarta Painting Biennal of 1974 which awarded prizes to the decorative style of painting. The protesters published the ‘Black December Statement’ fiercely
criticising the lack of social and political consciousness indecorative art and declaring that it was symptomatic of the lack of creativity in Indonesian art’.