In March 2007, a new contemporary art centre, the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, was opened in Brooklyn, New York, USA. From 23 March-1 July, the Center staged an inaugural major exhibition titled “Global Feminisms: New Directions for Contemporary Art”. Curated by two renowned feminist art historians, Maura Reilly and Linda Nochlin, the event was the first international exhibition dedicated to global feminist art from the 1990s to the present. The curators stated that the main aim of the exhibition was to present a showcase of international works by women artists from a feminist perspective. Moreover, the exhibition was noteworthy for looking beyond the Western brand of feminism, which had been perceived as the dominant voice in artistic expression since the 1970s.

In the same year, from 1-10 August, another exhibition, titled “Intimate Distance: Exploring Traces of Feminism in Indonesian Contemporary Art”, was held at the National Gallery in Jakarta, Indonesia. This more modest exhibition presented a wide range of works by 35 Indonesian women artists from the 1940s until 2007. The aim of this exhibition was to explore the notion of feminism in the works of Indonesian women artists and in the artistic strategies used by these artists. It showcased works by mid-career and emerging artists as well as established artists and even some deceased artists. An important part of the exhibition was the launch of a book called Indonesian Women Artists: The Curtain Opens, written by three Indonesian women writers and scholars, namely Carla Bianpoen, Farah Wardani and myself.

There was no link between the organizers of the New York exhibition and the event in Jakarta. That they occurred within a relatively short period of time was pure coincidence. And yet, these two exhibitions perhaps can be seen to reflect on one another, as “Global Feminisms” undertook a search for non-Western perspectives on art and feminisms while the Indonesian exhibition attempted to open up the Indonesian context to the international discourse of feminism. Furthermore, the two events shared a common goal and theme as they both sought to look beyond the perceived dominance of Western feminisms and to search for a new approach in contemporary art using feminist perspectives.