Agung Kurniawan
Agung Kurniawan was born in 1968 in Jember, Java and currently lives in Yogyakarta. Kurniawan developed his artistic work within the field of concrete socio-cultural activism. He believes that the role of an artist is more than simply producing work, and that there are larger social responsibilities to be met. As an artist he works in many fields: installation, drawing, sculpture and curating. His recent work focuses on act, phenomena, and pseudo theatre. He also co-founded Indonesian Visual Art Archive (IVAA) and Kedai Kebun Forum (KFF).
Gustave Courbet said: ‘Show me the angel and I will paint her.’ As a social-realist, Courbet always drew what he could see, rather than what people claimed was there. Agung Kurniawan works in the same way. His vision is that as an artist, he should expose everything there is, stating: ‘it’s the role of the artist to make things that are being hidden in society visible’. With this he points to things that are hidden in the face of issues like censorship, shame and (historical) denial. This work, depicting everything he was able to see at the moment of making the work, is a metaphor for this point of view.
Exhibitions
