Artists on Art

Free
In conversation with Assistant Curator Beth Citron, contemporary artists lead informal, topical talks within the museum’s galleries on select Friday nights.
Arahmaiani is one of Indonesia’s most respected and iconic contemporary artists, and her work is internationally recognized for its powerful and provocative commentaries on social and cultural issues. In the 1980s and ’90s, she established herself as a pioneer in the field of performance art in Southeast Asia, although her practice also incorporates a wide variety of media, including video, installation, painting, drawing, and sculpture. Since her first exhibition in 1980, her work has been included in over one hundred solo and group exhibitions around the world. Arahmaiani was included in the landmark 1996 exhibition, Traditions/Tensions, at Asia Society in New York City, with multimedia work that explored themes of sexuality and spirituality in contemporary culture. In 2007, she returned to New York as part of the acclaimed group exhibition, Global Feminisms, at the Brooklyn Museum. Since 2010, a particular focus of her work has been on environmental issues in the Tibetan plateau region, where she has been actively collaborating with local monks and villagers to foster environmental preservation. She recently developed a new performance work related to this project, entitled Memory of Nature, which incorporates Tibetan cultural influences with her characteristic flag ceremonies.
Since the 1980s, Arahmaiani’s work has been exhibited widely in museums and biennials throughout the world, from Asia to the Americas, Australia, and Europe, including the Venice Biennale (2003); Biennale of the Moving Image, Geneva (2003); Gwangju Biennale (2002); Bienal de São Paulo (2002), Performance Biennale, Israel (2001); Biennale de Lyon (2000); Werkleitz Biennale (2000); Bienal de la Habana (1997); Asia Pacific Triennial (1996); Yogya Biennial, (1994).