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Abstract exploration: Two artists helping to evolve Bali's 3D contemporary art
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Awash with color: Putu Sastra Wibawa stands among his expressive canvases in his Yogyakarta studio. (Putu Sastra Wibawa ) (Personal archive/Courtesy of Didin Djirot)
S
ome of the most recent developments in Balinese contemporary art trace their roots not to the “Island of the Gods” but to Yogyakarta, where the arts scene is a melting pot of cultures from across the archipelago.
In the 1970s, a group of students at the Indonesian Academy of Fine Arts (ASRI) in Yogyakarta set Balinese art on a new trajectory, led by their pioneering Balinese teacher Nyoman Gunarsa (1944-2017).
Young and ambitious, the students reinterpreted traditional Balinese iconography into new and exciting two- and three-dimensional compositions while retaining their symbolic context. This new art form captured international attention for its distinguished development in the global arts scene.
Crucial to the students’ innovation was their exposure to different models of art education and the opportunity live beyond their traditional communities as “outsiders”, exposed to other Indonesian cultures in the university city of Yogyakarta. They thus had new freedoms outside of the rigid Balinese village system to reflect on their culture from an external perspective.
This phenomenon continues in the generations of artists making breakthroughs to realize the evolution of Balinese art. Emerging artists I Kadek Didin Junaedi, who is also known as Didin Jirot, and Putu Sastra Wibawa are just two artists of the later generations that followed suit. Both artists hold regular exhibits in Yogyakarta and Jakarta, and periodically in Bali, and their innovative creations are defining a new direction in the evolution of 3D Balinese contemporary art.
"Traditional Balinese sculpture is very close to me. My father is a woodcarver. Therefore, the tradition has been well-honed [in me] since childhood," said Didin, and is studying fine arts at the Indonesian Arts Institute (ISI) Yogyakarta, formerly ASRI.
