'Utarakan Jakarta' Exhibition Sheds Light on Pasar Ikan
Jakarta. We who work and live around Jakarta's central business districts should indeed consider ourselves lucky. These city centers are usually lined with glitzy malls and skyscrapers that lull us with modern comforts. Overpasses crisscrossing the city's skyline might beguile us into believing that the city is supported by sophisticated modern infrastructures.
But should we take a look at the outskirts of the city, we can easily find millions of people living in sub-par condition. Deeply mired in poverty and a lack of education, they have no choice but to subsist with old and malfunctioning city infrastructure that jeopardizes their health and wellbeing.
Among them are the residents of Pasar Ikan, North Jakarta. These people, who make the headlines recently with the eviction by the provincial government of Jakarta, have been living with floods, poor sanitation and lack of clean water for generations.
Intrigued by their lives, Dutch photographer, Cynthia Boll, followed four persons living in Pasar Ikan, North Jakarta, for a year and captured their daily lives through her lenses.
"Living in a house behind a dyke in the Netherlands, I am pretty safe, even though my backyard is meters below sea level," said the photographer. "How different the situation is for the residents of Jakarta. What's life like when you are in constant fear of floods in a city sinking fast?"
Jakarta is indeed sinking. The capital currently relies on an existing 40-year-old seawall that is supposed to keep the Java Sea from overflowing and flooding it. But the 30-kilometer seawall is sinking into the area's soft alluvial sediments, thus offering little protection against the sea.
Many other parts of the city is also sinking by 7.5 to 25 centimeter per year due to deep groundwater extraction and population growth. At this rate, many experts believe that one third of the city will be submerged within 20 to 30 years' time.
Boll addresses these problems through her pictures, which are currently being displayed in an exhibition themed "Utarakan Jakarta (Speak Up Jakarta): the People behind the Seawall" at the Erasmus Huis Amphitheater, Jakarta.
The exhibition was opened by the photographer, ambassador of the Netherlands Rob Swartbol and Jakarta's deputy governor Sylviana Murni at the Erasmus Huis, Jakarta, yesterday (13/04).
"What connects the Netherlands to Indonesia, especially Jakarta, is water," said the ambassador of the Netherlands, Rob Swartbol, in his opening speech. "We have a lot of water in Holland. You have too much water here in Jakarta. What we should do is not see water as our enemy, we should try to make water our friend."
The exhibition narrates the daily struggles of fisherman Lukman, bicycle tour guide Sumari, jamu (traditional herbal drink) peddler Sarmini and schoolgirl Alda, who all live in Pasar Ikan, North Jakarta. In addition to the pictures, there are also a number of art installations and video installations in the exhibition that emphasize the pressing problems of the capital.
"It's a great exhibition with truly amazing pictures," said Jakarta's deputy governor, Sylviana Murni. "We shouldn't be sad or mad when Cynthia portrays the ugly sides of Jakarta. Instead, these pictures should serve to remind us of the urgent matters in the city."
"We should all work together hand in hand to solve these problems," said the deputy governor.
Until May 13, the exhibition at the Erasmus Huis Jakarta is open for public from Monday to Saturday from 9 am to 4 pm. There is no entrance fee to the exhibition.
After that, the same exhibition will be presented in Taman Waduk Pluit, North Jakarta, and Kota Tua, West Jakarta in June.
For more information, visit www.utarakanjakarta.com.
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