The second chapter of Taring Padis exhibition Rakyat Pasti Menang (The People United Will Never Be Defeated) is currently on view at Ibraaz, London, until October 18. In a conversation with Alexander Supartonoan early member of the Indonesian collective and an associate professor at Edinburgh Napier Universitythe chapter is framed around land justice and workers rights, bringing together six banners from 1997 to 2012 alongside 12 rontek ( small banners ) from 2023.
Land, labor, and the archive they rebuild
Supartono describes how the focus emerged from revisiting the collectives archive after the 1998 Reformasi. Based in Yogyakartaa largely agricultural region and Indonesias second-most popular tourist destination after BaliTaring Padi has long worked with laborers, peasant communities, and Indigenous groups. The groups manifesto cites the struggle for environmental justice, which, in practice, has meant aligning with Indigenous land rights and responding to invitations from communities to address specific hardships. Peasant iconography accordingly recurs throughout their work.
Exhibitions also serve as a way to rebuild whats been lost. The 1999 banner Rebut Kembali Hak Rakyat Atas Pengembangan Kebudayaan Rakyat (Reclaim Peoples Right to Establish Peoples Culture) was remade in 2022 for Documenta 15 after earlier banners, often borrowed as political tools, failed to returnparticularly between 1998 and 2002. For Ibraaz, the collective also recreated two banners. Marsinah (1997998) commemorates the 24-year-old trade unionist murdered in 1993; in Taring Padis Yogyakarta studio, their exhibition space is named Bilik Marsinah. Supartono contrasts her frequent role as a protagonist in their imagery with Suhartos place as an antagonist figure. He notes that on November 10 last year, both Marsinah and Suharto were declared National Heroes of Indonesia, with both families present at the Indonesian Presidential Palacea move he characterizes as a political stunt by the Prabowo administration that only underlines the need to support genuine workers movements.
Woodcuts, shared iconography, and global alliances
Taring Padis first collaboratively made woodcuts are the banner diptych Buruh Bersatu (Workers United) and Tanah & Petani Merdeka Menghidupi Semua (Farmers Give Life to All) (both 2003), joined here by Naikkan Upah Buruh (Raise Workers Wages) (2008). While A3/A4 woodcut posters are typically produced individually and submitted anonymously into the collectives body of work, large-scale woodcuts are made together. Their visual language has evolved in parallel across woodcut prints, cardboard puppets, and large-scale banners, with recurring figuresincluding Marsinahshaped by political topics and collaborations with communities. In response to post-9/11 geopolitics, antagonistic elements such as the American flag entered their imagery.
In the past four years, their international profile has expanded after Documenta 15, with solo shows in Amsterdam, Brisbane, and Venice, and invitations to the 2027 Yokohama Triennale. Institutions including the Art Gallery of Western Australia in Perth and Tate Modern in London have begun collecting their work. As one strategy amid this visibility, they have partnered with trade unions: in 2025 with the Italian General Confederation of Labor (CGIL) and FLAI in Rome, producing Basta Schiavitu (Stop Slavery) about Sikh migrant workers, later used by CGIL as a backdrop in political actions and meetings, including a court action for a worker who died in the field. They joined Culture in Resistance at Wortley Hall last April and will work with Masahat in Oslo and the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions next year on a banner about migrant workers. Banners from this international period will appear in the exhibitions third chapter.
At Ibraaz, the second chapter clarifies how Taring Padis art labor remains anchored in alliances with workers and peasants, turning banners and woodcuts into tools for collective memory and action.
