Jakarta’s urban planning seems in favor of demolishing all remnants of its Dutch colonial past as glass-fronted shopping malls and condominiums proliferate. Even so, the city’s architectural holdovers are still held dear.
Historical buildings
The skeletal, rain-washed façades of Kota Tua Jakarta’s (Old Batavia) buildings and its vendor and bajaj-choked streets show scant trace of its erstwhile prominence as Southeast Asia’s commercial hub - back when it was called the “Queen of the East”. Its Sunda Kelapa port was helmed by the Dutch East India Company (VOC), purportedly the world’s first multinational corporation with its spice monopoly and operation of 4,785 ships along its Asia trade route. The port now admits only phinisi schooners transporting freight, and the 300 year-old Kota Intan drawbridge constructed over one of many Dutch-built canals is fast deteriorating - despite a late-2007 renovation costing over Rp860 million - its wooden frame cracked and its maroon paint peeling and faded. While sunlight only highlights the dilapidation, by night the bridge is illuminated by soft up-lights that cast an aura of majesty that better recalls the bridge’s former importance as a trade route between the VOC fortress and the British IEC fortress.
Not all legacy is lost as some of the city’s former banks, warehouses and even the City Hall of Batavia (now Fatahillah Museum) that was once the seat of the VOC’s Governor General have become museums enshrining artifacts of Indonesian heritage, such as the Wayang Museum containing wayang golek (shadow puppets) and wayang kulit, gamelan sets and wayang paintings. The Maritime Museum, installed in a former warehouse of the VOC which used to shelter supplies of spices, coffee, tea and textiles, houses models of the ships and canons the VOC deployed to attain its quasi-governmental powers. A scale model of the Thousand Islands recreates the shipyard where the VOC’s vessels underwent repairs, while glass-corralled shipbuilding tools and literature recording maritime traditions and folklore further enlighten this era. Fatahillah Museum, flanked by rusted canons, is decidedly the area’s best-kept building, the display of Batavia-style furniture– dark mahogany replete with curlicues and carvings – and sparse household paraphernalia a loose evocation of 17th-century daily life.
Gedung Candra Naya, located on Jalan Gajah Mada, is an equal parts touching and saddening specter. Superimposed like a shrub at the foot of a mountain by the gargantuan Green Central City superblock, whose supporting pillars straddle the building’s courtyard, it is still billed a keystone of Batavian arts and culture, and hosted the Candra Naya Batavia Festival in June. Owned by Khouw Kim An, mayor of Tionghoa from 1910-1916 and1927-1942, who was taken prisoner by the Japanese during their occupation ofIndonesia, the building is hitherto configured as a residence – right down to the bedrooms facing the inner courtyard, family room and the study of Khouw Kim An – despite hosting socio-cultural activities such as the oldest photography club in Jakarta and the Sin Ming Hui.
The Jakarta Cathedral is said to be one of the most “out-of-Jakarta” architectural spectacles. Built neo-gothic style with its stained-glass rose window and twin 60-metre spires, “The Fort of David” and“The Ivory Tower”, its exacting replication of a European cathedral visually detaches the building from its unmistakably-Jakarta surroundings. Consecrated in 1901, the building’s second floor is no longer structurally safe for mass and the balcony where the choir used to sing now enshrines relics of Catholic rituals that chronicle the history of Roman Catholicism in Jakarta, such as a goblet used by John Paul IIduring a 1989 visit to Jakarta and a statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in ascarlet robe, palms raised heavenward.
Museum di Tengah Kebun is a literal breath of fresh air whose grounds comprise mostly vegetation,offering respite from the walled-in, glassed-in, stuffy museums that prevail. As its name suggests, the museum lies in the heart of a garden on a 4,200square-meter plot of land and contains 1,744 exhibits from 63 countries and 21 provinces in Indonesia, such as archeological artifacts from China, Japan,Mexico, France and England as well as 19th century furniture andbronze statues from Europe and America.
Statues
Jakarta’s statues – particularly those erected by founding President Sukarno – project moralistic ideals. The ‘PizzaMan’, as the Developing Youth Statue (PatungPemuda Membangun) is colloquially referred, holds aloft a dish of flames in a triumphant stance as a tribute to the “never-ending spirit of the youth to serve the country”. Built in 1972, the statue is located at the Senayan traffic circle that connects South and Central Jakarta. Likewise, the Dirgantara Monument, a muscled statue on a 27-metre pedestal frozen in a lunge position while pointing north, symbolized Sukarno’s hopes of developing an aeronautical industry as sophisticated as that of the then Soviet Union. Its northward orientation and proximity to Jakarta’s first airport in Kemayoran made it an unmissable sight to incoming and outgoing flights. The president sold his car to help fund this last statue. A less-vaunted though highly emblematic statue is the Independence Declarator Monument at Taman Proklamator, Menteng, the former residence of President Sukarno, where he and then Vice President Mohammad Hatta declared independence on August 17,1945.
Street art
While Jakarta’s museums and architecture revive the past, the city’s street art, gracing (though some would say defacing) underpasses, bridges, buildings and even the walled boundaries of private homes questions the future. On the rear of a house in Tangerang is seen a caricature of a weeping girl, accompanied by a speech bubble that reads “Pak Presiden, saya ingin terus belajar” (“Mr. President, I want to stay in school”). A wall mural in Lebak Bulus, South Jakarta, depicts a man whose face is censored with the word “koruptor” (corruptor), sweat beading his forehead, his mouth agape in horror as bank notes swirl around him. Black printed letters two feet high read: “Hati tak tenang walaupun banyak uang” (“The heart is not calm despite having a lot of money”). “Dimana pemodal berkuasa, hidup adalah neraka”(“Wherever capitalists rule, life is hell”) decries another.
Despite the seemingly one-track-minded urban development bent on eliminating what used to be, there is yet a smattering of history – and glimpses of the future – to be gleaned from Jakarta’s art and architecture.
