Heri Dono was born in Jakarta, on June 12, 1960. He was the first Indonesian artist to break into the global art scene during the early 1990s. Starting his career in the 80s, Heri Dono is well-known for contemporary installation works, many of which were inspired by the Javanese shadow puppets (wayang). He tried to comprise a number of complex elements from wayang performances: visual arts, music, storytelling, social criticism, humor, and myths of life philosophy. These components are merged into the performance’s narrative to give a generic interpretation to which multimedia elements are added. The traditional art performance inspires Heri Dono’s interest in revitalizing the arts that are deeply rooted in Indonesian traditions. In many of his three-dimensional installation artworks and performances, Heri Dono effectively makes use of ‘performativity’ so that the works are involved in complimentary dialogs with their audience. In his paintings, Heri Dono makes the most use of wild deformations and freestyle fantasies out of which emerge characters from the wayang stories. To this, he adds his profound knowledge and interest in children’s cartoons, animated films, and comics.

His name was recorded in Artlink, an established art magazine in Australia, stating that from 1993-2006, Heri Dono was the most internationally-invited artist. He was also recorded as 1 of 100 prominent Avant-Garde artists in the world. He has participated in more than 300 exhibitions and 35 international biennales including Asia Pacific Triennial (1993 & 2000), Gwangju Biennale (1995 & 2006), Sydney Biennale (1996), Shanghai Biennale (2000), Venice Biennale (2003 & 2015), Sharjah Biennial (2005 & 2023), Guangzhou Triennale (2011), Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2018), Bangkok Art Biennale (2018), and Gangwon Kids Triennale (2020) in South Korea. He also earned a number of awards, including Dutch Prince Claus Award for Culture and Development from The Netherlands (1998), UNESCO Prize (2000), and Indonesian Art Award by the Government of Republic of Indonesia (2014).

Can you tell us about your background and how you started your artistic journey?

My journey began in childhood, during my early years at Strada Santo Lukas Elementary School in Jakarta. My father often took me to the Presidential Palace in Bogor, where President Sukarno had amassed a remarkable collection of paintings by Indonesian masters. As a young boy, I was captivated by these works and dreamed of becoming a painter like those whose creations adorned the palace walls.

After completing high school with a science focus, I enrolled in the Painting Department at the Indonesian Institute of the Arts (ISI) Yogyakarta, where I studied from 1980 to 1987. But my foray into painting began even earlier, in 1977, when I was 17. I knew then that I wanted a profession free from retirement age, immune to institutional authority, and equalizing across all layers of society.

In 1989, while in Bali, I met Dr. Urs Ramseyer, a Swiss ethnologist and author of The Art and Culture of Bali. He introduced me to his brother, Chris Ramseyer, who ran an orphanage in Basel. I spent six months there in 1990, followed by a residency at IAAB, also in Basel. In January 1991, I held a solo exhibition at the Museum für Völkerkunde Basel. This opened doors to a wider journey—I visited cities across Europe, from Berlin to Venice, and later participated in exhibitions in Japan, Australia, the U.S., Brazil, and beyond.

My formal exploration into art began in 1983, when I started blending cartoon animation with animism. I saw an intriguing resonance between the two: in cartoons—like those by Walt Disney or Hanna-Barbera—characters survive impossible situations. They are indestructible, animated with energy. In animism, every object in the universe contains spirit or life force. This fusion of belief and form became the core of my expression.

By the mid-1980s, I was experimenting with aquarium-based installations (Aquarium Art) and ceiling fans adorned with birdcages and dolls (Mubeng Art). These early experiments predated the widespread recognition of “installation art” in Indonesia. Since 1992, I have continued to explore installation art alongside more traditional forms like painting, sculpture, and printmaking—all as part of an evolving, inventive practice.

How do your personal experiences and identity influence your art?

Growing up in Jakarta—an intense, chaotic metropolis—deeply shaped my worldview. The city was full of contradictions: beauty and violence, politics and crime, all unfolding in the daily headlines. My Catholic school upbringing was strict, often disciplinary, and it prompted reflections on authority and conformity. One of my works, Fermentation of the Mind, explores how students were expected to obey without question—responding with nods rather than resistance.

My science education in high school—math, chemistry, biology, geometry, physics—instilled in me a logical framework. But when I entered art school, I encountered a different kind of truth—one that was subjective, interpretive, and plural. This tension between certainty and ambiguity continues to fascinate me. It’s the meeting point between objective data and the poetic multiplicity of perception.

How has your artistic style evolved over time?

My artistic language is in constant evolution. During my student years, I was deeply influenced by the visual grammar of Juan Miró, Paul Klee, and Picasso. My lecturers praised my modernist approach—until I introduced wayang (shadow puppet) motifs into my work. Suddenly, they saw my art as a regression into “tradition.”

That puzzled me. Can a motif alone determine whether a work is traditional? For me, every symbol or form is reimagined through the artist’s concept. A wayang figure, for instance, is part of a cinematic lineage—a rudimentary form of animation that builds narratives through shadows.

Even mundane domestic moments influenced my thinking. I remember hitting our old black-and-white TV with a sandal to fix the signal—a ritual act of resurrection, you might say. A fan spinning in the tropical heat became a kind of mechanical spirit. These small events quietly shaped my understanding of movement, spirit, and life in objects.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being creative in your experience?

What I cherish most about being an artist is the deep connection between creativity, knowledge, and cultural evolution. If we look at the rise of Impressionism in art history, it didn’t emerge in isolation—it responded to the Industrial Revolution, to the invention of paint tubes that allowed artists to leave their studios and work outdoors.

Creativity is not merely about self-expression. It is about responding to the shifting dynamics of the world, initiating dialogue, and offering new perspectives. Through art, we don’t just make things—we bear witness to life and generate discourse that shapes cultural memory.

In what ways do you think art can serve as a bridge between cultural heritage and present-day realities?

In Indonesia—and throughout much of Asia—we say that art is the child of culture. I often use the metaphor of a cake: once baked, it’s sliced and shared. But someone must always bake the next one. In this way, culture depends on continuity. Art, when practiced with care and awareness, becomes a sustainable vessel for heritage—both preserving and transforming it across generations.

What advice would you offer to artists seeking to navigate the space between tradition and innovation?

Don’t treat tradition as mere ornamentation. It’s not enough to paste cultural motifs onto a contemporary surface for the sake of identity—it risks falling into exoticism. Instead, see tradition as a conceptual framework that can transcend modernist boundaries.

Take wayang, for example. It’s not just visual art—it’s a total art form. It encompasses music (gamelan), literature (epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata), theater (through the puppeteer’s movements), architecture (performed in pendopostructures), and visual arts (from the intricately carved puppets). In tradition, disciplines are not separated—they’re woven together holistically.

Artists today can draw on folktales from around the world, reinterpreted with local instruments and materials. But relevance to the present is key. After all, art is a testimony of its time.

Text & photo courtesy of Heri Dono

Website: http://heridono.com
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