Gatot Indrajati has turned the Children’s Art Space into a tinkering box — a factory of creativity filled with deconstructed ‘machines’. Using cardboard and timber offcuts, the audience is invited to use their imagination and make something new using the objects in front of them. The Tinkering Box encourages ‘tinkering’ where a broken object is mended or remodeled instead of being thrown away for something new.

Since the manufacturing boom in Indonesia, which began in the late 1960s, a culture of consumption has increasingly been embedded in our society. Buying new products rather than fixing old things has become the norm. Through the act of ‘tinkering’ Gatot reminds us of the valuable and rewarding process of making and, on a larger scale, its contribution to environmental sustainability.