Agus Suwage
Agus Suwage
Indonesian, born 1959
Person TypeIndividual
Terms
- Male
American, Eastern Band Cherokee, 1957 - 2018
Membership
Become a TMA member today
Support TMA
Help support the TMA mission
BiographyBorn in 1959 in Central Java, Indonesia, Suwage received his M.F.A. in graphic design from the Faculty of Art and Design at Bandung Institute of Technology in 1986. He has since been featured in almost 200 exhibitions around the world, and his works are included in most comprehensive collections of Southeast Asian contemporary art. He has exhibited in numerous international biennials, including the Asia Pacific Triennial (1996), the Gwangju Biennial (2000), the Singapore Biennial (2006), the Jogja Biennale (2007 and 2013), and Prospect New Orleans (2014-15). In 2009, the Jogja National Museum in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, devoted all three floors of its building to a major retrospective of Suwage’s work, including paintings, drawings, sculptures, and installations. A 670-page monograph, Still Crazy After All These Years, was published in conjunction with this landmark exhibition. Recent museum exhibitions include: Manifesto V: Arus, National Gallery of Indonesia, Jakarta (2016); After Utopia: Revisiting the Ideal in Asian Contemporary Art, Singapore Art Museum (2015); Panorama: Recent Art from Contemporary Asia, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore (2012); Beyond the East, Macro Museum, Rome, Italy (2011); Beyond the Self, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, Australia (2011). He presented his first solo exhibition in the United States, The End is Just Beginning Is the End, at Tyler Rollins Fine Art in 2011. This was followed in 2012-13 by a three-part series of CYCLE exhibitions shown consecutively in Jakarta, New York, and Berlin. CYCLE No. 2 was presented at Tyler Rollins Fine Art in 2013. In his New York Times review of the exhibition, Holland Cotter wrote: “Topical commentary has always been the foundation of this remarkable artist’s work. He’s a born satirist, which means a born moralist. The range of his subjects, cultural and existential, is broad; his take, vivid and sharp.” His third solo exhibition at Tyler Rollins Fine Art, Room of Mine, was on view from February 16 through April 1, 2017.