Curiosity.
It is the word Budiman Ong returns to when asked what connects his work as a designer with his role as a curator.
For nearly two decades, curiosity has shaped the way he approaches materials at ONG CEN KUANG, his Bali-based lighting studio. Today, it also shapes how he approaches people through Jia CURATED, the annual gathering of craft, design and culture he co-founded with Rudi Winata and Yang Yang Hartono.
What began in 2022 as Jia Curated Kiosks, an intimate display of craft and design, has since grown into a platform for Indonesian and international designers, makers, artists and creative practitioners. In 2026, more than 250 participating brands gathered at its new home on Pengembak Beach in Sanur.
Vietcetera spoke with Budiman about how curiosity moved him from materials to people, what goes into bringing hundreds of creative voices together, and why Jia CURATED wants to create more space for Asia’s design communities.
ONG CEN KUANG
Nearly 18 years before Jia CURATED reached its current scale, Budiman was exploring a much smaller world: light and the materials used to shape it.
At ONG CEN KUANG, his creative process often begins not with a predetermined object, but with a material and a question: What else could this become?
How curiosity became a design language
One of the clearest examples is Alur, where something as ordinary as a zipper became the structure of a lampshade.
Removed from its familiar function, repeated and manipulated by hand, the zipper took on an entirely different character. Rather than deciding immediately what a material should become, Budiman leaves room for its properties to guide the process.
For Jia CURATED 2026, Bali-based ONG CEN KUANG brought JANUR to Pengembak Beach, extending Budiman’s exploration of light into an outdoor setting.
But materials are only part of the process. At ONG CEN KUANG, artisans turn Budiman’s experiments into physical form, bringing knowledge and sensitivity that cannot simply be replaced by technology. This curiosity about materials would eventually lead Budiman somewhere else: towards people.
From Materials To People
For Budiman, the shift did not happen alone.
Together with Rudi Winata, he began exploring what could happen when different creative minds, practices and perspectives were brought into the same space. Along with Yang Yang Hartono, that thinking eventually became part of the foundation for Jia.
When I feel curious about a particular person, it usually means I have had a reaction to their products or to the way they work. I find something interesting in what they do.
For a designer, that curiosity might result in an object. For a curator, it might become a conversation, an invitation or a collaboration.
Budiman sometimes describes Jia CURATED’s programmes as “excuses” to meet people the team already knows, admires or wants to understand better.
Yet bringing those people together does not mean searching for similar work.
Quite the opposite.
Budiman is interested in designers with identities of their own. Different aesthetics and practices can sit alongside one another as long as there is enough shared philosophy to begin a conversation.
When people with similar philosophies but different practices come together, we gain a bigger and louder voice.
Jia CURATED
Jia CURATED first launched in 2022 as Jia Curated Kiosks, an intimate presentation of design and craft. It was rebranded in 2025 as its scale and ambitions grew.
At its core is a goal shared by its three founders: to help build and sustain a healthy ecosystem for creative communities in Indonesia through three pillars: craft, design and culture.
The name itself offers another clue. Jia means “home” in Chinese, fitting for a platform designed to bring different creative practices into one place.
Preparing for more than 250 creative voices
By 2026, that “home” had become considerably larger.
Jia CURATED moved to a 15,000-square-metre site at Pengembak Beach, framed by pine trees and mangroves along Bali’s eastern shoreline. More than 250 Indonesian and international brands participated, following an edition that welcomed more than 150 brands and 12,000 visitors in 2025.
Behind those five days is a process that begins much earlier. Budiman says the team typically spends around 18 months preparing for each edition. The theme begins taking shape more than a year ahead, which means the next Jia is already being discussed while the current one is still unfolding.
There are participants to select, programmes to develop and spaces to plan, but also a more complicated task: creating enough cohesion for hundreds of different practices to exist together without losing their individual identities.
The question is therefore not simply who should be here?
It is also why should these people be here together?
For Budiman, curation is less about controlling every voice than creating the conditions for those voices to meet.
Some projects from the event:
The 2026 programme reflects this approach. Architecture in Scale, curated by design writer Charmaine Chan, brings together architectural models from practices across Indonesia and wider Asia, while 360° Design Dialogues, curated by Design Anthology, creates conversations between Indonesian and international voices
The highlight: When nature becomes part of the event
The new location also changed the way Jia CURATED approached the event itself.
Sand, stone, sea, mangroves and shifting light were not treated simply as a backdrop. The conditions of Pengembak Beach directly informed the curatorial direction, encouraging participants to respond to the landscape rather than impose a predetermined exhibition environment onto it.
This relationship sits at the heart of the 2026 theme, Nature Weave.
Rooted in biophilia, our instinctive connection with what is natural and alive, the theme asks designers to look beyond nature as texture or visual inspiration and consider the systems connecting people, landscapes and ecosystems.
It proposes design as an act of coexistence, with humans understood not as owners of the environment, but participants within it.
In many ways, this echoes Budiman’s own approach to making. With materials, he pays attention to what is already there before deciding what they might become. At Jia CURATED, the same principle is applied on a much larger scale.
Even the landscape is given a voice.
From Indonesia To Asia
As Jia CURATED grows, its community is expanding beyond Indonesia. Rooted in Gotong Royong, the Indonesian principle of mutual cooperation, the platform is increasingly creating connections across Asia.
That direction is already visible through Road to Jia CURATED in Tokyo and programmes such as Architecture in Scale, which bring regional practices into conversation.
For Budiman, however, growth still comes down to people.
The key is people.
Finding the right people who have the same sort of philosophy in different countries is important.
He also hopes Jia can bring more attention to Indonesia’s creative talent, placing local designers “in the same bracket, in the same positions as any creative in the world.”
Yet he does not want Jia to grow endlessly. Asked about its future scale, Budiman simply says, “Slightly bigger than this.” What matters more is stronger curation, different perspectives and keeping the event in one place.
Jia is home; home is always about intimate feeling. If it’s too big, then you lose that.
That balance may define Jia CURATED’s next chapter: reaching further across Asia while remaining intimate enough for meaningful connections to happen.