FX Harsono @ Tyler Rollins Fine Art, NY

FX Harsono is presenting his first solo exhibition in the United States, Writing in the Rain. This leading Indonesian artist has been a central figure of the Indonesian art scene since the early 1970s, always politically and socially engaged.


In recent years he has focused particularly on the position of the Chinese minority in Indonesia, using the symbol of fragile butterflies and needles to allude to the discrimination they still face.

Writing in the Rain centers on a new video of the same title, a stark depiction of the artist with an ink brush writing his name in Chinese characters as rain slowly washes the ink away. It is a powerful meditation on loss, remembrance, and the endurance of personal and cultural identity. A series of seven paintings features images taken from the video with added quotations from legal documents, poetry, and books relating to the history of the Chinese Indonesian community.