Indonesia Artist
Yulian Ardhi

ARTIST BIO

Are the eyes the site by which an image enters the body? Or perhaps it is the mind that marks the moment of arrival before a final resting ground is consecrated? Agus Wijaya’s experimental sculptures Las (2022) and Lan (2022) depict silent spirits meditating on manipulated colour planes of dual-chromatic anaglyphs; without 3D glasses these set of mixed media abstraction are wholly observed by the eyes but are never ‘seen’ through the mind; a representation experiencing silent death. “[It is an] exploration of…the bridges and glitches between ways of seeing and knowing”.

Wijaya’s practice stirs symbolism, risk and secrecy. Born to a small town in West Java, ethnic violence sporadically seize his homeland while cues of visual and cultural racial discrimination latently persist beside token suppression. Tempered against overt risk-taking but speaking of the political and cultural bargain arrived in contemporary Indonesia today, Wijaya states: ”We’re lucky because it could be a lot worse. For that, we must be grateful, which means keeping our silence.” The Chinese-Indonesian artist now lives in Australia, experimenting with symbolism in new media to explore identification and dis-identification of his personal and cultural history. The artist was recently declared a finalist for the North Sydney Art Prize, Grace Cossington Smith Art Award and Fisher’s Ghost Art Award and The Churchie National Emerging Art Prize.


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We pay our respects to the Gundungurra people who are the traditional custodians of the land. We acknowledge Elders past, present and emerging for their immense spiritual connection to place which was never ceded.


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