If you are a bit into street art, or just interested by how a country like Indonesia (and particularly Java) see graffiti and painted walls, I would suggest you to have a look on what’s going on in Yogyakarta. 

I’ve seen a lot of street art in Thailand but as I used to work in a street art gallery in London, it’s always a surprise for my naive western eyes to see paint on some south east asian walls.
I don’t mean graffiti, because that is actually really international (see my post about Yangoon in Myanmar) and it’s mostly used as a medium for contestation. No, I’m talking about people, artists, who are taking time to draw, paint, scratch a wall and who are expressing an idea, a reflexion or just for the pleasure of the eyes, just for the beauty of the forms and esthetism.
You rarely see these kind of things here. Not because there is no talented artists but because most of the time it’s seen like degradation by the governments and it’s kind of impossible to have the authorization of doing it legally.

I don’t know how the common people are seeing street art but in Yogyakarta, the cultural capital of Indonesia, each street is covered by murals.

I sat on a coffee shop in what could be considered as the “hipster” area – ok, let’s call it “artistic area”, I know some of you are offended by this term – and not more than 10 minutes later, a middle aged guy sat at my table and start the conversation.

Boor appears to be one of the person who tried to change the face of Yogyakarta by organizing a street art, tattoo and music festival. He had the authorization to invite 80 international artists to cover some walls. But it got a bit out of control and more than 400 vandals came to the city and start spray painting everywhere. 

Well… You can guess that the government was not really happy about that and Boor was in big big problems. Instead of putting him in jail, they asked him to repaint 3km of walls and pay a big fee. Even if it was not his responsibility, he had to take care of it if he ever wanted to organize something similar one day.

I felt really lucky to meet Boor who was not just into creating big events but who wanted to implicate communities into art as a way of communication with each other or to feel recognize. Boor was also an artist who used recycled objects to paint over. 
   

Here are few snaps of what caught my eyes when I took time to wander around in Jogja. Enjoy the visit!