Dadang Christanto (B.1957)
Dadang Christanto was born in Tegal, a small village in Central Java, Indonesia, into an Indonesian family of Chinese descent. He studied painting in Yogyakarta, and was an active member of the arts community. With a diverse body of work that encompasses painting, drawing, sculpture, installation and performance, Christanto has won critical acclaim for his ability to portray and sensitively evoke reflections on universal human suffering and communal grief. He was amongst the first Indonesian artists to enter the international art world in the early 1990s, notably featuring in the first and third Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane in 1993 and 1999, as well as the Bienal de Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 1998. He was curated into many other major art events worldwide including Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2000), and was featured in the Venice Biennale in 2003 and at his home country the Yogyakarta Biennial, Indonesia (2003) and Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, (2010). His works are held by the National Gallery of Australia, as well as major collections in Singapore, Japan, Indonesia, and in Europe is at Magdeburg Museum Germany. The National Portrait Gallery of Australia recently honoured him with an exhibition for his role in the development of art in Australia.
Throughout his career, Dadang Christanto has produced a body of works that honours the countless victims of political violence and crimes against humanity. The sincerity and rawness of emotion portrayed in his works stem from his personal narrative, which he has subtly woven into every aspect of his art. References to the year 1965 appear again and again. As an eight year-old boy, Christanto was heavily affected by his father’s disappearance, thus his art has become inseparable from this tragedy.
His latest solo exhibition, ‘M I S S I N G’ was held at Wei-Ling Contemporary, Kuala Lumpur, in 2018. The monumental installation comprises 110 acrylic and charcoal imagined portraits of the 1965 victims. Dadang Christanto’s oeuvre engages with collective history and personal trauma. His painting and sculpture are imbued with an aura of silence, precisely referencing the political silence that enveloped the injustices that has shaped his childhood. His unbounded practice transcends its specific historical and political roots and leads to a wider meditation on the nature of violence and unjust death and suffering.