Missed Art & Bali 2026? Its flagship exhibition, What The Body Remembers, stays open at Labyrinth Art Gallery in Nuanu Creative City until 29 November 2026. That leaves anyone in Singapore with a long weekend to spare two more months to see the show at the centre of a fair that drew collectors from our side of the causeway and well beyond.
The numbers are why this is worth your attention. According to organisers, the fair’s second edition welcomed 10,000 visitors and recorded nearly 300 works sold across 23 exhibitors over three days, from 11 to 13 September. For young artists, designers and anyone plotting a creative career, that’s a signal that the regional art market has room for more than the usual big-city fairs.
Year Two Asked a Different Question
Art & Bali launched in 2025 at Nuanu, a 44-hectare creative city in Tabanan on Bali’s southwest coast. This year it brought together more than 300 artists from Indonesia, Southeast Asia and further afield, with collectors flying in from Jakarta, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, Korea and India. The visitor and sales totals come from the organiser’s own post-event count, so read them as reported figures, though they’re still a sizeable jump for a fair that only launched last year.
Kelsang Dolma, the fair’s Founding Director, put the change neatly. “Last year people were asking whether Bali could hold an international art fair. This year the question was different. Collectors came back, galleries sold, and people were already asking me about 2027 before we’d closed,” she said. For an event this young, repeat buyers matter more than a big headcount, because they’re the ones who keep galleries coming back.
We walked through the fair’s layout in our opening-week look inside Art & Bali 2026, so this one looks at who actually bought, sold and showed up.
The Collector Who Went From Two to Nine
The most telling story belongs to Tatiana Azarkh, a Bali-based collector who bought her first two paintings at the 2025 edition. This year she came back and bought nine works from Tonyraka, G13 and Agung Rai Fine Art Gallery!
“I’ve always been passionate about art, but I’m still new to collecting,” she said, adding that “each one came with a story I got to hear first-hand.” That’s the part young artists should notice. A fair where new collectors can talk to galleries directly, and grow from a first purchase into a proper habit within a year, is exactly where emerging names get picked up.
Galleries from outside Indonesia found fresh audiences too. G13 Gallery from Kuala Lumpur, the only Malaysian gallery at the fair, met buyers seeing its artists for the first time. Founder Kenny Teng called Art & Bali “a promising platform with strong potential to grow as an important meeting point for regional contemporary art.”
Galleries Are Scouting Bali Early
Some exhibitors treated the fair as a test run for something bigger. Sangkring Art Space, a contemporary art space from Yogyakarta, used it to study the Bali market ahead of opening its own space on the island at the end of December. Programme Manager Jenny Vi Mee Yei said the fair let the team “meet new collectors, and understand the interests of audiences here.”
When a well-known Yogyakarta space decides Bali deserves a permanent address, that says more about momentum than any visitor count. Bali-based Lanö Contemporary Art Gallery brought the local perspective, with founder Kemalezedine describing the island as “a living context in which histories, traditions, and contemporary practices continuously intersect.”
Then there was Callisto × ArtLab, which paired Callisto’s artist-support platform with Italy-based ArtLab. Their booth mixed installation, sculpture, editions and technology, which is a lot harder to sell from a standard white cubicle than a framed canvas. Founder Kirill Pobedin said the fair treated artists “as partners, with the flexibility to take risks,” and for multidisciplinary creatives that flexibility is worth more than any booth size.
The Government Is Paying Attention
Indonesia is treating this as policy rather than a tourism sideshow. Irene Umar, Vice Minister of Creative Economy of the Republic of Indonesia, joined Nuanu CEO Lev Kroll on the opening panel, titled “Where Are the Next Creative Capitals?”
“Indonesia’s creative economy grows when artists, designers and craftspeople have places where they can meet buyers and be seen by the world,” Umar said. Kroll framed Nuanu’s role in similar terms: “Indonesia has extraordinary artists and makers, but too few places where the world comes to see them.”
The Tabanan Regency Government backed the fair as well. Vice Regent I Made Dirga said events like this “show that Tabanan has a place in Bali’s cultural future, not only its past.” The opening panel also launched Nuanu Future Talks: Fashion & Art, where 21 speakers from government, art, fashion, design and business covered topics from cultural ownership to digital art.
So, Bali or Singapore?
Here’s the honest take. Singapore still has the museums, the established galleries and fairs like ART SG, which we covered in our highlights of ART SG 2025. Bali isn’t replacing any of that, and the exhibitor list here leaned heavily Indonesian.
What Bali offers is a different kind of door. It’s a destination fair spread across a creative city with talks, satellite shows and studios, and it has room for artists who don’t fit neatly into a booth. For a young creative in Singapore, the smart move is treating it as an addition to your map, especially if your work sits between craft, fashion and art.
The satellite show Do Not Clean This Room, curated by Gatari Surya Kusuma for Block42, made the point best. It gave 18 artists temporary studios built from shipping containers, where visitors saw finished works beside the research and experiments behind them and could talk to the artists directly. That’s a far more generous format for emerging talent than a crowded booth wall.
Still On Until 29 November
If you only make one trip, make it What The Body Remembers. Curated by culture journalist Bandana Tewari with Assistant Curator Brina Paska, it brings together 26 artists, designers and studios from Indonesia and India working across contemporary art, fashion, textiles and craft.
Tewari said what stayed with her was “the extraordinary diversity of people it brought into the room.” For anyone working with textiles or craft, a show that puts Indian and Indonesian makers side by side is rare enough to justify the flight.
🗓️ Date: 11 to 13 September 2026 (fair concluded)
⏰ Time: Public hours ran 11am to 8pm on 12 and 13 September
📍 Location: Nuanu Creative City, Beraban, Kediri, Tabanan, Bali, Indonesia
🖼️ What The Body Remembers: On at Labyrinth Art Gallery, Nuanu Creative City, until 29 November 2026
📈 Reported results: 10,000 visitors, nearly 300 works sold, 23 exhibitors, 300+ artists
🔁 Next edition: Organisers plan to return to Nuanu Creative City in September 2027
Bali pulled in returning collectors, a Yogyakarta gallery scouting a new home and a Vice Minister on the opening panel, all in only its second year of hosting a fair. That’s enough reason for any young creative to keep watching the island. Catch What The Body Remembers before 29 November, then follow Nuanu Creative City and Art & Bali on Instagram at @artandbali for news on the third edition in September 2027!
Photos and Visuals courtesy of Art & Bali.
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