Juni Pattimahu-Kusumanto (1957) was born in Bandung, Indonesia, and migrated at the age of twelve to the Netherlands, where she attended St. Joost Breda Academy of Arts in 1990-1995. Believing in the nonviolence[1] philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi as the only way to find the harmony among different and often conflicting interests of many people in the world, she herself seeks to find this harmony in her art. The balance but also duality between light and darkness always present in her works.
More recent works put nature more central, showing the artist’ deep concern towards the ecological crises that increasingly confront life on planet earth. In these later works, Juni has chosen the rainforest ecological system as a metaphor of harmony and balancing acts of the different creatures, including humans. These works seem also to tell that there is no rigid divide between the conscious and the unconscious; both make part of one ecological entity.
Working on various media ranging from charcoal to acrylic paint on paper or canvas, she recently uses transparent garment fabric such as tulle, chiffon or organza as media to convey her ideas, with yarn as threading lines and coloured planes. The thin structure of the fabric emphasises the duality of the strength and at the same time the vulnerability of the used materials.
[1] Nonviolence is the personal practice of not causing harm to others under any condition. It may come from the belief that hurting people, animals and/or the environment is unnecessary to achieve an outcome and it may refer to a general philosophy of abstention from violence. It may be based on moral, religious or spiritual principles, but also the reasons for it may be purely strategic or pragmatic. [source: Wikipedia]
Born
1957 in Bandung, Indonesia.
Education
St. Joost Breda Academy of Arts in 1990-1995
