The absence of art in Indonesia’s presidential election has been noticeable.

Back in 2014, when Joko Widodo—known as Jokowi—campaigned to become the seventh president of this republic, it was remarkable how many of us artists put our creative support behind him. We wrote songs, comics, paintings, poems, and more. The Indonesian artist Hari Prast even made a series of illustrations portraying Jokowi in the style of Tintin, the famous Franco-Belgian comic book. The Tintin-style renderings captured Jokowi’s promise. He was a simple businessman, not a hedonistic politician, who could be an action-oriented problem solver.

Jokowi won that election with 53.15% of the vote.

Artists got involved in politics again in 2017, after a far-right religious group accused then-Jakarta governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama—known as Ahok—of blasphemy. During his trial, Ahok received an outpouring of artist tributes, and after the court sentenced Ahok to a two-year prison term, artists flooded his prison with thousands of artworks and bunga papan, or flower boards. It was a show of solidarity with Ahok, but also with what he represented for Indonesia’s identity as a diverse nation.

Yet I have not seen artists put their genuine support behind any of the three candidates running in the ninth presidential election this week.

By nature, artists share their thoughts and concerns wholeheartedly without exterior motives. That means when they start to put their support behind a candidate, they communicate a real hope for change. But none of the candidates in the election field have successfully inspired artists.

As a comic artist myself, I am used to scribbling descriptions to convey my characters’ personalities. If I were to do that for this election, here’s what I would include for each of the candidate’s profiles:

Candidate 1) Anies Baswedan, 54: A charming politician and scholar, and formerly an education minister and the governor of Jakarta. He makes a perfect first impression. But during the gubernatorial election in 2017, Anies did not do anything when his zealous followers incited racial hatred toward his rival, the aforementioned Ahok, a non-Muslim candidate. In this period, Anies seemed to aggravate existing polarization in the country. For some people, this makes him an ineligible candidate.

Candidate 2) Prabowo Subianto, 72: An ex-military general accused of human rights violations, who has now attempted to rebrand himself as a cute and chubby cat-loving uncle. Subianto is the son-in-law of Suharto, the late strongman president who reigned over Indonesia for 32 years. After decades in the military, Prabowo was dishonorably discharged in 1998 following allegations of human rights violations in East Timor. Following a self-imposed exile, he returned to Indonesia to form a political party. He has run for president, unsuccessfully, in the past. In 2019, Jokowi—who follows the motto “keep your friends close, and your enemies closer”—named Prabowo his defense minister. In a surprising twist, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, Jokowi’s son, is now running as Prabowo’s vice-presidential candidate.

Candidate 3) Ganjar Pranowo, 55: The ex-governor of Central Java province who has the support of the secular-nationalist political party. A large number of people feel positively about Ganjar’s first presidential election bid. This does not come as a surprise, because Java is the most populated island in Indonesia. However, Ganjar is also backed by the political party founded by Indonesia’s fifth president, Megawati Sukarnoputri—the daughter of Sukarno, the late founding father and first president of Indonesia. The public questions whether his run is serving to advance her political ambitions.

Since election season began, national debates between Candidate 1, Candidate 2, and Candidate 3 have been dominated by personal attacks. The candidates don’t share programs, promises, and real ideas. For instance, I have yet to hear any of them address the crucial issue of protecting women and children, long marginalized, especially in the provinces and the villages. Femicide and child abuse are in the news every single day. Yet none of the candidates has presented any plans to prevent domestic violence, even though we know we need to significantly transform society to end this scourge.

Watching this presidential election makes me think back to 2019, when Jokowi was campaigning for his second presidency. Even my mother, almost 70 years old back then, marched in a massive rally held at Senayan Stadium, the biggest football stadium in all of Jakarta. Hundreds of thousands showed up that day dressed in white to show their support, enough people to blanket a 5-kilometer radius around the stadium. That’s how hopeful Indonesia was back then.

I wish we could feel such hope today. Instead, we watch as Jokowi, having hit his constitutional term limit, now pushes for voters to elect his son vice president. Political dynasties are not uncommon here, but few expected such a move from Jokowi, the most supported politician in Indonesian history, who has spoken out against nepotism in the past.

It’s no wonder art has been absent this year.

I want to write a more optimistic piece about this election, but who am I, if not a hopeless romantic creative worker whose expectations have been broken again and again?

Alas, unfulfilled expectations are what made us artists!

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For her Zócalo Sketchbook, Glasson presents a series of abstract compositions that represent the natural world in the tactile intricacy of her chosen materials. “For this series, I have abandoned the realism of my portraiture work and am using natural and synthetic inks to create playful abstract shapes,” she tells Zócalo. She describes the process as “totally different” from how she usually works: “With these, I give all my attention to materials and colors,” she says. “They are wildly fun to make, and at times even meditative.”

Glasson’s Sketchbook invites you to zoom in close to get lost in the fjords and forests of her paint, or to stand back and find yourself face-to-face with ethereal creatures from other worlds or dimensions. Glasson finds pleasure in how open the work is to interpretation and how the shapes can “sometimes reference the natural world and other times seem otherworldly or just slightly ridiculous.”

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“Mail Call” by Alvin Lavon Smith Jr.

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For her Zócalo Sketchbook, Moon puts a psychedelic lens on the natural world, rearranging the birth and adolescence of five animal species into bright kaleidoscopes to delight the third eye as much as the first two. Note the details in the artwork—the color shift in the cocoons, the delicately rendered leaves framing the firefly, and the subtle color glow around the black lines.

“This series attempts to capture the beauty of the ever-changing and adaptive natural world,” Moon says. “The theme was inspired by metamorphosis—the magical ability to physically restructure oneself into an entirely new entity.”

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For their Zócalo Sketchbook, Pérez Espinosa has rendered images of California flora and fauna on top of local store receipts. The vibrant colors and undulating lines of the art joyfully overwhelms the substrate of humdrum commercialism.

Of their work, Pérez Espinosa says, “I’m delving deeper into understanding systems of care and Indigenous knowledge in regard to nature, and how essential they are to healing ourselves. I drew different sprouts representing my feelings on tending, renewal, learning, interconnectedness, and coastal life.”

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For her Zócalo Sketchbook, Grimsdale painted five pieces of enamelware with roses and scrollwork traditional to British “canal art.” The roses Grimsdale depicts were commonly seen on 19th-century working boats. This was “a time when the canals were busy with industry and families took great pride in their brightly decorated vessels,” she tells Zócalo. The painting was “quick and efficient,” Grimsdale adds, “as there would have been many boats to work on, hence the stylized nature of the artwork.”

The scroll shape has its own deep roots in signwriting and folk art. “The classic shape of the scroll, with all its flicks and flourishes, is inspired by the leaf of the Acanthus plant, a design that dates back to Greek and Roman architecture,” says Grimsdale. While the shape has become “quite far removed from its original model, particularly in signwriting,” she shares that she often turns to those early carvings for inspiration.

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For her Zócalo Sketchbook, Campbell depicts five well-known tourist destinations from around the world and populates the sites with endangered animal species native to each region. The more lyrical black and white drawings of the endangered species contrast the tourist sites, which are rendered in a brightly colored style reminiscent of textbook drawings. The contrast gives the animals an almost ghostlike quality—fading memories drowned out by the bright solidity of modern life.

Campbell tells Zócalo that she hopes her Sketchbook “may bring just a tiny bit more awareness to the devastating issue of biodiversity loss.”

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For her Zócalo Sketchbook, LeBlanc-Payne draws inspiration from natural artifacts found on the beaches of Connecticut; Cape Cod, Massachusetts; Costa Brava, Spain; and the Côte d’Azur, France. Using traditional ink illustration, she composes her beachcombing into elegant arrangements that she finishes off with vibrant geometries of color that she adds digitally.

“I refer to the sketches as ‘exercise at the beach’ to flex my drawing muscles,” LeBlanc-Payne tells Zócalo. “My day-to-day is immersed in digital. It’s satisfying to switch off and switch over to a traditional medium to create these drawings.”

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For her Zócalo Sketchbook, van Drimmelen combined the look of watercolor painting, woodcuts, crayon etchings, and fabric painting. Remixing them into her own brand of illustrative digital magic, she’s immortalized for us a northern flicker, a starling, sword ferns, broad-leaf maple seeds turned into weird moths, and Strobilurus trullisatus—a tiny mushroom that grows on Douglas-fir pine cones.

“These arrangements are based on observations and feelings around living close to nature for the first time, noticing so many small things because there’s nothing else to distract me,” she tells Zócalo. “My mind is wandering to interesting places, imaging things that aren’t necessarily there.” The nighttime world, especially, engenders these conditions that she’s come to think about as high visibility: “Walking at night, when it is so dark, many objects covered with dew glow when you shine a light on them in the same way reflective material would,” she says.

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