Woven plastic and cotton threads, acrylic paint, plywood, 2022
The main material of the artwork is up-cycled plastic ropes found in mangrove forests and on beaches in Bali. It is part of the Weaving the Ocean project that was started during the pandemic, when almost the entire world was on lockdown and Bayuaji saw that many Balinese people were suffering due to the loss of tourist income. He decided to employ people to gather and unravel the plastic ropes. The landscape painting on woven fabric was inspired by old masterpieces by Western and Eastern artists. Nature is so universal that it encompasses the plastic pollution that is a huge challenge in contemporary life.
Ari Bayuaji, born in Indonesia (1975), moved to Canada in 2005 and studied fine arts at Concordia University (2005–10). Dividing his time between Montreal and Bali, he is known mainly for his art installations incorporating found and ready-made objects from various parts of the world. These objects may be old and discarded, but he injects them with emotion influenced by contemporary issues, so that their artistic “content” is entirely new. Bayuaji’s work is in the collections of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, the Musée Pointe-à-Callière, the Fondation Agnès B. (Paris), the Coral Triangle Center of Bali, Precious Plastic of Bangkok, and Danfoss (Denmark). Solo exhibitions include Mizuma Art Gallery of Singapore, Warin Lab Contemporary (Thailand), Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (Singapore), RedBase Art Gallery (Australia), and Coral Triangle Center (Indonesia). Artwork from the Weaving the Ocean project was recently featured in the Kennedy Center’s RiverRun Festival in Washington, DC.