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(b Kabul, June 5, 1973).

Afghan video and performance artist and photographer, active also in the USA. After fleeing Soviet-occupied Kabul with her family in the late 1980s, Abdul lived as a refugee in Germany and India before moving to Southern California. She received a BA in Political Science and Philosophy at California State University, Fullerton, and an MFA at the University of California, Irvine, in 2000. Abdul first returned to a post-Taliban Afghanistan in 2001, where she encountered a place and people transformed by decades of violence and unrest. Since that time, Abdul has made work in Kabul and Los Angeles, staging herself in performances and creating performance-based video works and photography that explore ideas of home and the interconnection between architecture and identity.

Beginning in the late 1990s, Abdul made emotionally intense performance art informed by that of Yugoslavian artist Marina Abramović and Cuban-born American artist Ana Mendieta. At the time unable to travel to Afghanistan, Abdul created and documented performances in Los Angeles that probed her position as Afghan, female, Muslim, a refugee and a transnational artist. In ...

(b Bandung, May 21, 1961).

Indonesian installation, video and performance artist and writer. Arahmaiani graduated from the Fine Art Department of Bandung Institute of Technology in 1983 and then continued her studies at the Paddington Art School, Sydney (1985–6) before attending the Akademie voor Beeldende Kunst & Vormgeving (AKI), Enschede (1991–2). During the 1980s she was also part of a rebellious young artists’ movement in Indonesia.

Arahmaiani is known for her specific point of view in responding to the domination of academicism in the Indonesian art world, which became her departure point in developing Happenings and performance art during the early 1980s; a boom era of painting and commercialization that occurred as a result of the economic boosting under the Indonesian New Order regime. One of her most important works, Newspaper Man (1981), in which she wrapped her body in newspaper advertisements and walked through the streets and shopping malls of Bandung, stimulated a more vibrant practice and discourse on the use of human body as an art medium in Indonesian art. ...

[CidambaraChirrambalam(Skt and Tamil: ‘Consciousness as space’)]

Temple site in Tamil Nadu, India, sacred to Shiva in his form as Nataraja, the Cosmic Dancer. The Nataraja temple occupies an area of about 16 ha and consists of a complex series of walled enclosures containing shrines, halls and gateways built between the 12th and 20th centuries. The temple’s origin is ascribed to the sages Vyagrapada and Patanjali, and it has become associated with Appar and other southern saints. The Chola kings, from whose time the earliest surviving portions belong, were devoted to Nataraja and held their coronation ceremonies in the precinct. The active religious and artistic life of Chidambaram continues to the present day.

At the centre of the Nataraja complex are the Chid Sabha and Kanaka Sabha, two small wooden buildings with hipped gable roofs sheathed in copper. While based on earlier prototypes, these structures probably date to the 17th century. Shiva is worshipped here as Nataraja and as the ...

(b Nairobi, 1958).

Kenyan photographer, multimedia and performance artist, and teacher of Indian descent, active in the USA. DeSouza was born in Kenya to Indian parents. Raised in London from the age of 7, he called his background that of a ‘double colonial history’. DeSouza attended Goldsmiths College in London and the Bath Academy of Art, and although he has worked primarily in photography and as a writer on contemporary art, he has also branched out into performance art, digital painting, and textual and mixed media arts. He moved to the USA in 1992 and in 2012 became of Head of Photography at the University of California, Berkeley.

The primary themes in deSouza’s work are those of colonial encounter, seen in Indigena/Assimilado (1998), a photographic series of migrant workers in Los Angeles; migration, as explored in Threshold (1996–8), his early photographic series of airports empty of people; exile, which he explored in ...

(b Jakarta, June 12, 1960).

Indonesian painter, installation, video and performance artist. Dono studied art at the Indonesian Institute of the Arts (ISI), Yogyakarta (1980–87) while also studying traditional Javanese shadow-puppetry (wayang kulit) under the puppeteer (dalang) Sukasman. He became known for producing works inspired by shadow-puppetry (e.g. the painting The Legend Puppet, 1988); adapting the two-dimensional imagery, the gamelan music and narration of wayang kulit to recreate metaphors of modern civilization. Dono’s work encompassed painting, sculpture, installation and performances, often employing low-tech multimedia and self-assembled electronic devices that generate music, moving images, light projection, producing a low-tech kinetic environment (e.g. Flying Angels, 1996).

Dono’s works create a meticulous connection between traditional puppetry and modern animation, as he viewed both types of moving images as lively worlds of absurdity where narratives often do not make any sense, yet seem enjoyable for people of all ages. Dono’s socio-political background—the repression of artistic freedom during the Indonesian New Order regime—drove him to choose a kind of foolish, impolite, stupid, naive, ridiculous and teasing expression in his works. Metaphors and criticism deeply imbued with jokes were the safest ways to avoid suppression and censorship by the regime. In creating criticism through ...

(b Patna, Jan 2, 1964).

Indian mixed media artist and sculptor. After studying art in Patna, Gupta travelled with a Hindi-language theatre company, acting and designing sets. Primarily a sculptor, Gupta also painted, created installations, performances, videos and photography. Often the imagery used in one medium is operative in another, creating a symbiotic relationship between works. In 1991 he moved to New Delhi and concentrated on painting, favouring a style of abstract figuration that was prominent in India. His work matured with 54 Mornings (1996), a work comprised of 54 small, generic wooden stools with painted imagery and found objects. The work catalogued the objects of daily ritual use, both sacred and secular, and set the artist on the path to exploring the quotidian and clichéd.

In works such as My Mother and Me (1997) and The Way Home (2001, see Oslo exh. cat., pp. 34–5), Gupta arranges common objects into uncommon ensembles, creating sculptures that take on the grandeur of stage sets. He has also cast such objects as chairs, a Vespa motorbike, bicycles, bamboo sticks or liquor bottles in bronze or aluminium to create rarified monuments from the most humble things ...

(b Ha Tien, Nov 16, 1968).

Vietnamese conceptual artist. Lê was born near the Cambodian border, but fled with his family when his hometown was invaded by the Khmer Rouge in 1979. Lê moved to Los Angeles and studied photography at the University of California, Santa Barbara and received his MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York in 1992. In 1989, while at the University of California, Lê enrolled in a class on the Vietnam War (1955–75) that emphasized American hardship. This sparked Lê’s earliest public art project, Accountability, a series of posters that Lê put up on his college campus (reproduced in 1992 for Creative Time, New York, Washington, DC, and Los Angeles). These posters juxtaposed American media images of the Vietnam War with explicit pictures of Vietnamese suffering, accompanied by captions detailing the damage done to Vietnam. The desire to intervene in dominant perceptions of the Vietnam War propelled Lê for much of his artistic career....

(b Bangalore, Nov 9, 1956).

Indian photographer and performance artist. Pushpamala abbreviated her family name, a standard custom in South India, and she has refused to disclose what the N. stands for. She received a degree in economics, English and psychology from Bangalore University and then studied sculpture at the M.S. University in Baroda, in the western Indian state of Gujarat (1985). Her early works, mostly in terracotta, were figurative, resembling dolls and puppets and often arranged in groups. By the mid-1990s she was experimenting with found objects and with crafting objects by hand. Among her most successful works of this period was Labyrinth (1994; see 2004 exh. cat.); a circle of charred wooden sandals, such as those usually worn by holy men in India, implying a cyclical connection between religion and violence.

In 1996 Pushpamala embarked on what she referred to as ‘photo-performances’. These were elaborately staged scenarios in which she played the lead role, sometimes joined by other actors and almost always dramatically filmed. While indebted to Cindy Sherman’s ...

(b Chiang Mai, Feb 21, 1971).

Thai installation artist (see fig.). Rawanchaikul studied at Chiang Mai University and received his BA in 1993. He focused on the idea of bringing art to everyday life and gained recognition through his Navin Gallery Bangkok (1995-8; see 1999 exh. cat., pp. 232–65). He turned a cab into a mobile gallery and invited artists to exhibit their works in this private–public space (see fig.). The taxi gallery moved through Bangkok’s traffic thereby bringing art to busy Bangkok and questioning the lack of space for young artists in Thailand. Rawanchaikul also used public transport as a means to bridge a gap between non-art audiences and contemporary art projects. In Another Day In Sydney (1998; see 1999 exh. cat., pp. 219–31), he interviewed taxi drivers and made a comic based on their stories. The comic was then distributed to taxi passengers for free. In Cities on the Move...

(b Nakornsawan, Oct 7, 1957).

Thai performance artist, printmaker, anti-war activist, musician, writer and poet . Sitthiket graduated from the College of Fine Arts, Bangkok in 1981. Sitthiket’s work focused on alienation and social issues, such as the decaying political system, the environment, prostitution, migration and poverty. He was most recognised for his exhibition Inferno (1991), in which he was inspired by Traiphum phra ruang, the ancient Buddhist text, portraying images of how sinners would be punished according to their sins in hell. Instead of depicting traditional Buddhist sin and hell, he appropriated sinful acts and redemption for modern Thai society. For instance, in The Punishment of Those Corrupted Politicians Whose Flesh Would Be Cut in Pieces, Being Fried and Fed Him Until His Death. In In Hell, the Bad Politician Will Be Reborn to Consume Himself Forever, Sitthiket employed bold colour, simplified his use of line and employed crude and iconographic figures in association with narrative text to emphasize the modern sins committed by professionals, such as soldiers, teachers and artists....

( George Henricus )

(b Colombo, Dec 3, 1900; d Colombo, Dec 20, 1944).

Ceylonese photographer and musician . He was introduced to photography at a very early age during visits to A. W. Andree’s home and studio. It was only in the last ten years before his death that he returned to the medium with greater dedication and seriousness. Between 1919 and 1924 he qualified as a barrister in England and also became an accomplished pianist after studying at the Royal Academy of Music. Four years after his return from England he abandoned his legal career and became a pianist, often accompanying renowned foreign musicians at recitals in Colombo.

By 1930 Wendt’s involvement in the arts had earned him a pivotal place in the development of the modern movement in Ceylon. Alborada, his new residence in Colombo, which he designed and decorated in a contemporary style with prints and his own photographs, became a centre for intellectuals such as the painter George Keyt (...