HERI DONO
Heri Dono combines the traditional Indonesian shadow puppets, Gamelan music and dance with elements of avant-garde art so as to create experimental works that reflect on the relationship between the traditional and the modern. Alternately using performance, dance, painting, sound, video, sculpture and installation, Dono is exhaustive in his range of media. He mixes the seemingly light-hearted and humorous to reach serious gender and political issues. His works have a critical edge despite their rural motifs and nostalgic feel. Indeed one might say that his works have a nostalgic feel in order to speak all the more critically about social and political issues. His use of modern language, rural forms, and artisanal practices constructs a dialogue between the international and the local" in the age of globalization.
"Wayang," the name for the traditional Indonesian shadow puppet show has played an important political role in his native Indonesia Audiences long did not realize the ideological messages of the shows. Dono's interpretation of traditional stories thus exposes this practice, using contemporary Indonesian history and events to pointedly reflect on the post-colonialera. The meeting, clashing, and disappearance of power, military force, and exotic culture are frequent topics in Dono's exhibitions and performances, as seen in such works as Badman (1992) or Angels Caught in a Trap (1996).
For The Legend of Mount Merapi (2004), Dono uses a massive screen and over a dozen cardboard puppets in a large-scale theatrical puppet show, the remains of which become a performance-installation. The work speaks of the contemporary city and gender through the legendary myth of the city of Yogyakarta. Like so much of Dono's engaged work, The Legend of Mount Merapi locates the meaning of artistic creation in real life, confirming the artist's view that, "Basically, the issues to be tackled by art are not esthetic questions taken as art itself, but, rather, questions outside art that do not have any relationship with art..Art always concerns human values and, necessarily, culture. So human issues remain the responsibility of individual artists." -A.C
http://www.qag.qld.gov.au/content/apt2002_standard.asp?name=APT_Artists_Heri_Dono
http://www.universes-in-universe.de/asia/idn/awas/06/english.htm
http://abcasiapacific.com/apt/artists/dono.htm
http://www.hybrid.concordia.ca/~ian_camp/texts/heridono.htm
http://www.elision.org.au/collaborators/dono.html
http://iwebs.url.com.tw/main/html/goya/44.shtml
Born 1960 Jakarta, Indonesia
Lives and works in Yogyakarta, Indonesia
The Legend of Mount Merapi , 2003
Performance installation, mixed media
Courtesy the artist
Performance installation, mixed media
Courtesy the artist
Heri Dono combines the traditional Indonesian shadow puppets, Gamelan music and dance with elements of avant-garde art so as to create experimental works that reflect on the relationship between the traditional and the modern. Alternately using performance, dance, painting, sound, video, sculpture and installation, Dono is exhaustive in his range of media. He mixes the seemingly light-hearted and humorous to reach serious gender and political issues. His works have a critical edge despite their rural motifs and nostalgic feel. Indeed one might say that his works have a nostalgic feel in order to speak all the more critically about social and political issues. His use of modern language, rural forms, and artisanal practices constructs a dialogue between the international and the local" in the age of globalization.
"Wayang," the name for the traditional Indonesian shadow puppet show has played an important political role in his native Indonesia Audiences long did not realize the ideological messages of the shows. Dono's interpretation of traditional stories thus exposes this practice, using contemporary Indonesian history and events to pointedly reflect on the post-colonialera. The meeting, clashing, and disappearance of power, military force, and exotic culture are frequent topics in Dono's exhibitions and performances, as seen in such works as Badman (1992) or Angels Caught in a Trap (1996).
For The Legend of Mount Merapi (2004), Dono uses a massive screen and over a dozen cardboard puppets in a large-scale theatrical puppet show, the remains of which become a performance-installation. The work speaks of the contemporary city and gender through the legendary myth of the city of Yogyakarta. Like so much of Dono's engaged work, The Legend of Mount Merapi locates the meaning of artistic creation in real life, confirming the artist's view that, "Basically, the issues to be tackled by art are not esthetic questions taken as art itself, but, rather, questions outside art that do not have any relationship with art..Art always concerns human values and, necessarily, culture. So human issues remain the responsibility of individual artists." -A.C
http://www.qag.qld.gov.au/content/apt2002_standard.asp?name=APT_Artists_Heri_Dono
http://www.universes-in-universe.de/asia/idn/awas/06/english.htm
http://abcasiapacific.com/apt/artists/dono.htm
http://www.hybrid.concordia.ca/~ian_camp/texts/heridono.htm
http://www.elision.org.au/collaborators/dono.html
http://iwebs.url.com.tw/main/html/goya/44.shtml