J+ Art Awards 2025 makes its international debut through a collaboration with Study: Osaka Kansai International Art Festival (OKIAF

Osaka International Convention Center – venue pertama J+ Art Awards diadakan di OKIAF

Imagine a space where art, culture, and innovation move side by side. Like lines flowing freely while remaining connected. This is where J+ Art Awards 2025 positions itself—not simply as an art competition, but as a movement that reignites conversations across borders. This year, J+ Art Awards expands onto the international stage through a strategic collaboration with Study: Osaka Kansai International Art Festival (OKIAF), a contemporary art festival in Japan that serves as a meeting point for artists and cultural thinkers from around the world.

Organized by Connected Art Platform (CAP), J+ Art Awards 2025 takes Living Lines as its theme, a poetic metaphor for lines that connect the past and the future, rituals and technology, and memory. Living Lines is a curatorial statement that invites the public to see art from another perspective: as part of the pulse of life—moving, breathing, and constantly changing.

Sandat Wangi, Payas Sekar

A Cultural Bridge from Indonesia to the World

For the first time, CAP is bringing the voices and works of Indonesian artists into the Asian art landscape through the Connected Art Platform x Art & Bali Booth at OKIAF. Held at the Osaka International Convention Center, the exhibition is part of Study × PLAS: Asia Art Fair, an international Japan–Korea art fair held under the auspices of OKIAF 2025 and coinciding with Osaka–Kansai Expo 2025. A total of 23 works by 9 artists will be presented at the booth, inviting a global audience to explore a range of artistic approaches, from intimate drawing practices to bold digital explorations and material experiments.

Artists such as Nasirun, Yessiow, and Utami A. Ishii appear alongside a younger generation including Dwiky Aditya, Riyan, and Irsyad K. They bring narratives shaped by everyday life, local traditions, and responses to contemporary issues such as the ecological crisis and the loss of traditional knowledge. Amid this complexity, new voices also emerge from the three GENERAYA Awards finalists: Popomangun, Sandat Wangi, and I Gede Sukarya—each expressing ecological sensitivity, symbolic tenderness, and contemplation on existence.

Sandat Wangi, Mekar

More Than Just an Exhibition

J+ Art Awards’ involvement in OKIAF is far from ordinary participation. It is part of a long-term strategy to build an Indonesian creative ecosystem capable of competing and engaging in dialogue on a global level. “This collaboration is not just about participation, but about building an ecosystem,” said Adam Hawari, Project Manager of J+ Art Awards. In this context, CAP’s booth at OKIAF serves as an important platform for facilitating the exchange of ideas, cross-border collaborations, and, of course, expanding commercial opportunities and visibility for Indonesian artists.

This year, J+ Art Awards 2025 attracted nearly 500 participants from 42 countries, an achievement that demonstrates how the competition’s ideas around art across disciplines, cultures, and social issues have resonated widely on the international stage. Supported by an international curatorial team including Mona Liem, Tobias Brunner (Switzerland), Abby Hermosilla (MoMA New York), and Yessiow (Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia 2024), the program is not only strong locally, but also globally relevant.

Weaving the Future Through Living Lines

In a world filled with uncertainty, J+ Art Awards chooses not to stand still. It chooses to weave. Through living lines, whether in the form of brushstrokes, digital imagery, or fragments of stories from their homelands, Indonesian artists bring honest, reflective, and hopeful perspectives. They do not simply fill spaces, but create new ones—places where art can grow, connect, and heal.