Rakyat Pasti Menang: Opening Evening

Join us for the opening evening of Rakyat Pasti Menang, Taring Padi's first London exhibition.  

Bahasa Indonesia for ‘the people united will never be defeated’, the show brings together major works and archival material from the collective’s nearly thirty-year history.  

About Taring Padi: 

Taring Padi was founded in Yogyakarta in 1998 by a group of progressive art students and activists in response to the sociopolitical upheaval of the Reformasi era. The collective’s commitment to anti-militarism and anti-fascism is informed by their experiences under a brutal military dictatorship. Since their founding, Taring Padi’s artistic practice has been an integral part of socio-political and cultural actions, supporting marginalized communities and various social groups in Indonesia and globally. 

Their works and acts of solidarity take the form of collective creations such as large-scale banners used in street protests, woodcut prints, posters, cardboard puppets, music and performance. Their artistic mediums are reproducible and can be widely distributed, founded on their collective principle of art as a tool for education, activism, and social transformation. 

Recent exhibitions include People’s Liberation at Sale Docks in Venice in 2026, as well as Organise – Educate – Agitate with Cantadora Gallery in Rome in 2025. In 2024, Taring Padi presented the exhibition Tanah Tumpah Darah / The Land Where We Spill Our Blood to Defend It at the Griffith University Art Museum in Brisbane, showcasing a banner created in collaboration with the First Nations art collective ProppaNow. They also held a major exhibition at Framer Framed in Amsterdam, Tanah Merdeka / Liberated Land (2023), featuring a large banner made in collaboration with the Brazilian Jewish diaspora organization Casa do Povo and the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST). In 2022, Taring Padi took part in documenta fifteen, presenting two decades of artefacts related to direct political action. Titled Bara Solidaritas / Flame of Solidarity, the presentation in Kassel, included over 1,000 cardboard puppets created in collaboration with communities in Indonesia, the Netherlands, Germany, the United States, and Australia, who participated in collective workshops.