MET Glodok

For the second volume of Translating Glodok, we shifted from photography to sketching as a way of engaging with the neighborhood. Across three different sketch walks, we learned that a sketch is never really finished by the hand alone. It is completed by conversation. Nugraha shared how his years of exploring Glodok, along with conversations with its locals, have shaped the way he sees and translates the neighborhood through sketches that tell its stories. The sketch that followed carried...

Remembrance begins on a Friday in December 2025 — the day before MET Glodok opens its doors. No visitors yet, the space is being readied, the café prepared, programs arranged. The team moves through the neighborhood: walking the alleys, talking to neighbors, tending to the things that need tending. MET Glodok is an independent cultural space rooted in the heart of Jakarta’s historic Chinatown, founded and run by a fourth generation local resident who grew up and chose to stay there. On...

Before we shape Translating Glodok, we find ourselves asking one question: What if the way we understand Glodok is only one among many? What we see shapes how we understand, but understanding asks for more than observation alone. It requires a sensitivity to acknowledge that each perspective carries its own truth, shaped by different experiences, distances, and ways of being in the neighborhood. Through the first volume, we invited participants to encounter the area not simply as a place to...