Iwan Effendi | Dissolved 2

Courtesy of the artist and Mizuma Gallery

Iwan Effendi is an artist living and working in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. He has held more than a dozen solo exhibitions in Asia, at venues such as Mizuma Art Gallery (Tokyo), ARTJOG13 (Yogyakarta), RUCI Art Space (Jakarta) and Valentine Willie Fine Art (Kuala Lumpur), among others. In 2006, Effendi and his spouse Ria Tri Sulistyani founded Papermoon Puppet Theatre, and in 2020, he founded Ing Printmaking Studio. He has undertaken residencies with the Museum of Art in Kōchi, Japan (2015); Federation Square, Melbourne, Australia (2014); and Asian Cultural Council in New York, USA (2009-10) researching on puppetry, as well as the visual and performing arts.

Dissolved 2 is part of a body of work sparked by a simple question: what goes through a person’s mind when they are lost in their thoughts such that a certain expression appears on their face? The drawing depicts one of Effendi’s puppet faces, staring back in a pensive state of self-absorption. The artist is interested in how audiences interpret and emotionally engage with his characters, often finding reflections of themselves in the puppets.