Coming Home: A Place Behind The House

I Nyoman Sujana, born in Sayan, Ubud in 1972, is one of the few artists of the Ubud area to have broken free from the constraints of the local painting tradition. Like almost all the youth from his village, Kenyem was first trained as a painter with the Young Artists naïf tradition of nearby Penestanan. There he learned the repetitive patterns imposed by that convention. Later, after attending the Indonesian Art High School (SMSR) in Ubud, and the Indonesian Art Institute (STSI) in Denpasar (1992–1998), he shifted to abstraction. Kenyem’s work then developed into a discourse about the place of human beings in nature. In 1999 he exhibited at the Komaneka Fine Art Gallery with Mahendra Mangku and Nyoman Masradi. In 2011 he had a solo show there, called The Bicycle Diaries.

Kenyem has had solo exhibitions in Bali, Jakarta, Malaysia, Singapore, and Sweden, and has participated in numerous group exhibitions in Bali, Yogyakarta, and Jakarta, as well as in Malaysia, Myanmar, Korea, and the Beijing International Art Biennale, Beijing, China.

Kenyem works in a meticulously detailed manner, often with calligraphic fields. Iconic to his paintings are small androgynous figures that appear to be dancing. Trees and especially leaves are a recurrent visual motif, as are large hovering rocks. Everything is carefully shadowed to give the impression of floating.

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