Born in 1967, Tegal, Central Java, Indonesia.  Lives in Yogyakarta, Indonesia and Foster, Rhode Island, USA

Artist's Concept

The work presented in this exhibition depicts exterior as well as interior terrain.  The images are of intersecting political, social, emotional, dream, and physical landscapes, and are a response to events and issues that have drawn my attention over the past year.

Hurting Landscape has a close connection to an earlier series called Community Storage.  The current work continues my exploration of how individuals collectively create values and norms through relationships with their physical and mental environment.  My earlier focus was on the tensions created from the interaction between individuals and groups as they create standards for social and political life and the profound confusion and social disorder that can result.

The basic premise that guides the current work is that the physical landscape always has a connection to, or reflects, the interior landscape of a community.  The paintings, sculpture and installations presented in Hurting Landscape reflect the physical changes, deviations, damage, and corrosion of the landscape around me.  I explore the mindset, systems and structures necessary to create these kinds of significant physical modifications and question who they benefit.  It seems that the intended or ideal functions of social-political structures have been corrupted, from the highest to the lowest levels.  The interaction - this cause and effect - is at the core of my work.  Questioning the impetus and goals of these structures and mentality make visible a new dimension for seeing landscape from a personal perspective.