Documenta will hold its 15th edition next year despite the ongoing pandemic. The quinquennial exhibition is scheduled for 18 June-25 September, 2022  in Kassel, Germany. RuangRupa, a Jakarta-based art collective that was established in 2000, has been appointed as the curator for the event.

This will be the first time an Indonesian - or, in fact, Asian - art curator leads a grand art exhibition. Documenta is a renowned commercial art fair, and one of the most prestigious global art events along with other world-class biennales, such as the Venice Biennale and the São Paulo Art Biennial. 

“We need to think [about] Documenta in a new way, and we believe that RuangRupa will bring these new ideas into Documenta,” Sabine Schormann, the new general director of Documenta, said at a press conference.

Kassel Mayor and Documenta Supervisory Board Chairman Christian Geselle said in these still uncertain times, the curatorial concept of RuangRupa offers opportunities to respond to current events and to question the familiar.

The concept RuangRupa has prepared for Documenta 15 is “Lumbung.” A lumbung (rice barn) is a place to store communally-produced rice as a common resource for future use, representing the group’s aim to have a collective mode of sustainable resource-sharing. RuangRupa told Arnet News that it is about generosity and empathy. “The need for lumbung in this current time of upheaval is paramount,” it stated. The curatorial approach aims at a different kind of collaborative model of resource use—economically, but also in terms of ideas, knowledge, programmes and innovation.

In the lead-up to Documenta 15, the group plans to install itself in Kassel and found ruruHaus, a semi-permanent “living room,” at a former department store.

Lumbung members will develop long-term conversations to share knowledge, solidarity and resources, RuangRupa said in a statement. “The initial lumbung-members will invite new members to join and share their tried-and-tested practices with each other, making the initiatives visible in various forms and modes of expression within the framework of Documenta 15 in Kassel and its relations to other locales.”