A painting hangs in a gallery, a punk song blasts through a cheap speaker for about three minutes, a theater performance draws people into a dark room for an hour or two, and a documentary is shown on an emergency screen in a small town in the province. None of such things come with tanks, armed battalions, or political manifestos. Yet, from one regime to the next, Indonesia has always treated art as if it were a loaded weapon.

When a watercolor painting is taken with suspicion like a rebel manual and guitar chords are enough to spark panic, as if music could topple the state, it’s like anxious parents afraid their kids might start thinking for themselves after hearing a poem.

Aside from not being a side effect of political power, the history of art censorship in Indonesia is one of its main rituals. Since the colonial era, art has occupied an uncomfortable position between ornament and danger. For instance, the Dutch East Indies administration censored newspapers, theater performances, and political writings. Representation itself threatened colonial legitimacy. Art was feared because it revealed clear truths. Under Sukarno, art was inseparable from ideology. The Lekra and anti-Lekra conflicts showed how cultural production was never a neutral territory. Paintings, novels, and performances were wings of political factions.

Then, Suharto’s New Order emerged, a period where the state refined censorship into a form of administrative art. The regime understood how violence alone couldn’t stabilize authority, but had to be accompanied by narrative management.

According to Michel Foucault’s theory of power, power operates through prohibitions or violence, circulates through institutions, discourse, surveillance, normalization, and discipline. The modern state punishes the body, producing obedient subjects. The censorship board is a bureaucratic office, a factory of consciousness under disciplinary power, where citizens internalize surveillance and start censoring even before the state gets involved. Ideally, authoritarian citizens become both prisoners and guards.

In the context of Indonesia, using Foucault’s discourse concept, discourse determines what can be said, who can speak, and which truths are considered legitimate. In an authoritarian system, discourse is maintained with religious-like intensity because controlling discourse means controlling social reality. During the New Order, the official narrative about communism, nationalism, religion, morality, and development was institutionalized through schools, films, television, literature, and state ceremonies, becoming both unpopular and dangerous.

In Foucault’s theory, the New Order’s censorship practice represents a close relationship between knowledge and power, in which the state monopolizes historical truth. Films like Pengkhianatan G30S/PKI are disciplinary instruments where state violence requires continuous reinforcement because memory is a political realm. Quickly, Indonesian artists learned that criticism always ends in imprisonment, and therefore in a slightly subtle punishment. Funding disappears, performance venues cancel events, licenses mysteriously vanish, journalists stop contacting, surveillance becomes commonplace, and fear turns into the social climate.

Post-authoritarian Indonesia after 1998 promised democratic openness, yet Indonesian post-authoritarian analyses show how reformasi did not eliminate authoritarian structures. According to Vedi Hadiz and Richard Robison, democratization in Indonesia always preserved oligarchic power relations beneath democratic aesthetics. The uniforms changed, the language softened, elections multiplied, but coercive habits survived institutionally and culturally. Therefore, authoritarianism is decentralized.

Rarely, contemporary censorship appears via state decrees alone. Instead, censorship operates through police pressure, military intimidation, religious organizations, bureaucratic obstruction, digital harassment, public morality campaigns, and institutional “concerns.” Nobody officially bans anything. Simply put, it becomes impossible to perform safely. Politically, power avoids responsibility. It retains effectiveness, and the modern Indonesian censorship apparatus behaves like a spirit. Everyone feels its presence, yet officials continuously deny its existence.

In December 2024, Yos Suprapto’s exhibition was cancelled. The exhibition, titled “Kebangkitan: Tanah untuk Kedaulatan Pangan,” was scheduled to open at the National Gallery in Jakarta before being canceled following disputes over several paintings depicting former president Joko Widodo in critical and symbolic ways, and the paintings addressed agrarian exploitation, political power, and food sovereignty. Reportedly, one image depicted a businessman being fed rice by a farmer beneath the shadow of a dog. Another portrayed explicit sexual imagery connected to the state’s symbolic architecture.

The National Gallery and associated figures framed the issue as a curatorial disagreement, which perfectly illustrates post-authoritarian management. Honestly, seldom does contemporary censorship introduce itself. Nobody says, “We fear political criticism.” Instead, power disguises itself through administrative language. The exhibition was “curatorial inconsistencies,” the gallery protected coherence, and Indonesian bureaucracy has become talented at laundering repression through procedural vocabulary.

According to Foucault, modern power functions best when repression appears rational, technical, and impersonal, reflected institutional discipline masquerading as professionalism in the National Gallery’s actions. The result, however, remained identical to classical censorship; the public was prevented from accessing artworks, the artist was pressured into compromise, and the institution protected political comfort. Once again, Indonesia’s democratic institutions demonstrated dedication. Freedom of expression, provided expression remains decorative and toothless.

Quickly, reactions drew parallels with the New Order era because post-authoritarian Indonesia remains haunted by authoritarian memory. Instead, authoritarian reflexes survive inside institutions, officially celebrating democracy. Dramatically, the state no longer burns books in public squares because contemporary repression prefers plausible deniability. Today’s censorship is cleaner and softer, and it stays unchanged.

In February 2025, another cancellation happens in a theater performance. Historically, theater in Indonesia has occupied a dangerous position because live performance creates collective immediacy. Unlike film or recorded music, theater gathers bodies in shared space. From W.S. Rendra during the New Order to contemporary activist performances, Indonesian theater collides with state anxiety because performance transforms criticism into communal experience. Power fears gatherings, but art provides the excuse.

Theater censorship emerges through security discourse in which authorities invoke concerns about order, morality, or public stability. Here, modern states regulate populations by managing risk, normality, and acceptable conduct. A theatrical performance becomes threatening because it temporarily disrupts disciplinary norms. The stage allows alternative realities to become imaginable. Authoritarian logic understands imagination itself as politically dangerous.

Publicly, democratic governments endorse freedom while treating dissenting expression as a disturbance. It creates what many Indonesian scholars describe as an illiberal democracy, a system where electoral procedures coexist with governance habits. Art becomes trapped inside contradictory demands. Artists are encouraged to celebrate national identity, cultural diversity, and values, but only within ideological boundaries, and Indonesian democracy resembles a shopping mall security guard insisting customers are free to walk anywhere except the places in which matter most.

In February 2025, Sukatani, the punk band, withdrew their song “Bayar Bayar Bayar” after public pressure and alleged police intimidation. The song criticized police corruption through satirical lyrics about bribery and institutional abuse. Following the song’s viral circulation, the band publicly apologized to the Indonesian National Police while revealing their previously concealed identities.

Extraordinarily, punk music traditionally depends upon anonymity, resistance, and anti-authoritarian aesthetics. However, the forced removal of masks transformed the apology ritual into a disciplinary spectacle. According to Foucault, punishment in modern societies is performative because the goal is visibility. The public apology video served as political theater designed to restore institutional dominance, and the band members appeared subdued, apologetic, and exposed. Power demanded submission.

Some police representatives denied suppressing the song while simultaneously celebrating freedom of criticism. Other institutions acknowledged how the song constituted legitimate free expression. Meanwhile, reports emerged alleging intimidation and coercion behind the scenes. The contradiction reveals the genius of diffuse authoritarianism. Nobody officially bans the song. Simply, the artists become terrified enough to erase themselves voluntarily.

Foucault described it as self-discipline produced through surveillance in which the individual internalizes power until obedience becomes automatic. In Sukatani’s case, the state doesn’t require mass imprisonment when fear produces compliance. Increasingly, contemporary Indonesian censorship operates psychologically. The artist begins calculating risk instinctively. Musicians censor lyrics before recording. Preemptively, curators dodge contentious themes. Filmmakers dilute political content to survive distribution systems. Effectively, repression succeeds most when censorship becomes invisible labor performed by artists against themselves.

The public backlash supporting Sukatani also revealed another dimension of post-authoritarian Indonesia. Social media disrupted institutional narrative control, and public sympathy transformed the band into resistance, yet the resistance demonstrated a Foucauldian approach because platforms expand expression and intensify surveillance. The same networks amplifying dissent also expose artists to harassment, monitoring, and attacks. Indonesian democracy resembles a panopticon with comment sections.

In May 2026, the disbandment of group screenings of the documentary film Pesta Babi perhaps represented the continuity with traditions. Reports described military intervention against public screenings and discussions organized by journalist and activist networks in Ternate. Reportedly, the documentary addressed colonialism, Papua, environmental destruction, and state violence. Through concerns about security risks and stability, the military justified intervention. Naturally, nothing protects democracy better.

Uniquely, cinema has always occupied a sensitive position in Indonesian political history because film combines narrative, image, and emotion. During the New Order, film censorship boards regulated political content. Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing, decades later, demonstrated how violence continued haunting Indonesian public memory. Documentary film, in particular, threatens authoritarian structures because it contests official archives. The documentary camera becomes counter-history.

Pesta Babi entered such territory by discussing colonialism and contemporary exploitation. Regarding alternative narratives, the military response reflected state paranoia. According to Foucault, discourse represents a battlefield where competing regimes of truth struggle for legitimacy, and states defend official history because legitimacy depends upon continuity. A documentary questioning state violence threatens epistemological authority itself.

Authorities framed censorship as prevention. Supposedly, the public required protection from unrest. Here, institutions repeatedly claim citizens are mature enough for democracy during elections but insufficiently mature to watch documentaries without military supervision.

The persistence of repression across paintings, theater, music, and film demonstrates how Indonesian censorship is structural. Different governments, institutions, and ideological actors reproduce similar disciplinary patterns because censorship is embedded in political culture. After all, Reformasi altered the repression more successfully than its substance.

Democracy requires more than elections. It requires tolerance toward discomfort, criticism, ambiguity, and disruption. Frequently, art produces such experiences, but consequently, insecure political strategies control expression because art destabilizes official order. Directly, a protest speech argues. Art contaminates perception.

Indonesian authorities underestimate the intelligence of their citizens. Every censorship act reveals profound distrust toward public interpretation. Paintings must be removed because audiences might think politically, songs must disappear because listeners might criticize institutions, and films must be interrupted because viewers might question narratives. Formally, democracy survives while epistemological control remains authoritarian.

Contemporary Indonesian censorship depends upon a dictatorship. Instead, power disperses through institutions, regulations, narratives, norms, and intimidation. The result is a society where freedom exists theoretically but operates conditionally. Artists remain free, provided they avoid offending actors, and freedom becomes ceremonial.

Often, Indonesian post-authoritarian studies warn against democratic triumphalism. Because authoritarianism was an institutional habit, conditioning, bureaucratic reflex, and disciplinary structure, Suharto’s fall did not eliminate authoritarian logic. Today, censorship controversies reveal how such structures survive beneath rhetoric.

Perhaps, the tragic aspect of such incidents lies in predictability. Indonesian artists understand the boundaries before crossing them. Painters anticipate institutional panic, musicians anticipate intimidation, and filmmakers anticipate disruption. The state’s greatest achievement is the normalization of censorship expectations, and citizens treat repression as routine administrative weather.

Yet art persists because repression unintentionally confirms art’s significance. No government fears harmless decoration and states censor because representation matters materially. A painting alters perception, a song reorganizes anger, a performance generates solidarity, a documentary reopens historical memory, and art threatens authoritarian tendencies because it reminds citizens how reality is neither fixed nor sacred.

Today, Indonesia stands in a struggle between aspiration and inheritance. The battle no longer appears through dramatic coups or mass ideological campaigns alone. Sometimes, the struggle emerges inside gallery rooms, independent music scenes, temporary theater spaces, and documentary screenings, interrupted by nervous officials claiming to preserve public order. The techniques evolve, the language modernizes, the uniforms soften, yet the central anxiety is identical.

Maybe, if paintings, songs, performances, and films possessed no force, institutions would ignore them. The silencing of Indonesian art exposes potency. Somewhere under the language, rhetoric, and branding, the state continues confessing the truth through every act of censorship. Art still matters enough to frighten power.

References

  • Barker, J. (2008). Becoming a Nation of Spectators: Indonesia after Suharto. Duke University Press.
  • Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Pantheon Books.
  • Foucault, M. (1980). Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977. Pantheon Books.
  • Hadiz, V. R. (2010). Localising Power in Post-Authoritarian Indonesia. Stanford University Press.
  • Herlambang, J. (2025). Ada Apa dengan Sukatani? Kompas.id.
  • Irawan, W., & Ihsan, N. (2026). No Instruction to Ban “Pesta Babi” Film Screening, Top Minister Says. ANTARA News.
  • Robison, R., & Hadiz, V. R. (2004). Reorganising Power in Indonesia. Routledge.
  • Tanamal, Y. (2024). Closure of National Gallery Exhibition Sparks Censorship Concerns. The Jakarta Post.
  • Tapsell, R. (2017). Media Power in Indonesia: Oligarchs, Citizens and the Digital Revolution. Rowman & Littlefield.