Kelas Menengah (Middle Class)
Kelas Menengah: fitting in, standing out
A Krack Studio Project
10 June to 10 July 2023
Krack Studio, Yogyakarta
Last December, the Kracks spent four days at the National Library in Jakarta looking at advertisements in popular Indonesian magazines from the 1950s through to today. We were researching a project about “Kelas Menengah”; a term we use all the time and yet nobody really knows what it is.
According to the World Bank, there are more than 150 million middle class or aspiring middle class Indonesians. They use economic indicators to determine these figures: monthly income, consumption per capita, access to health, education, transport and so on. However, what became clear in this project is that “Kelas Menengah” can also be understood in other ways. In these advertisements, Middle Class is indicated by how we dress, what we eat, how we talk, who we talk to, and hundreds of other subtle codes. Our patterns of consumption determine how we fit in, but also how we stand out.
This exhibition is the third installment of our “Tanah Impian” (Dream Land) series, which looks at how newspaper advertisements reflected issues in contemporary Indonesian culture from the late 1800’s until today. The exhibition also marks Krack’s 10th anniversary as a screenprinting studio, gallery and collective.
