The Indonesian capital’s nickname, the ‘Big Durian’, is a play on the ‘Big Apple’ moniker and the
highly fragrant local delicacy known as ‘the king of fruits’ growing in the foreground. Jendela Musim Hujan
(Rainy Season Window) depicts a flood in the capital city that displaced people and caused widespread
destruction, but only in marginalized neighborhoods lacking modern urban infrastructure.
The middleground destruction rendered along the lower edge of the painting amounts to a ‘slow reveal’.
This organization of the composition is a metaphor for the wealthy and political classes whose
marginalization of large swaths of Jakarta’s population is less a failing than a hallmark of the project of
modernization in developing nations. From the safety of the window, in an elevated and therefore luxury
building, the viewer’s perspective implicates their positioning in this structure as they witness the suffering
in the historic ‘kampungs’ (villages) in the flood-prone lands below.