Jumaldi Alfi
(b. 1973 in Lintau, West Sumatra, Indonesia)

Alfi grew up in a literary family where poetry in particular was an integral part of life. Alfi’s own artistic gift emerged through painting and drawing more than writing; yet he has always retained a deep love of words, and an intuitive understanding of the power of narrative, which have strongly influenced his visual language. As a youngster, Alfi was sent to the Indonesian High School of the Arts in Yogyakarta, Java. Returning to West Sumatra in later years, Alfi became more politically and socially aware of the complex patterns of West Sumatran history, where natural beauty and abundance and a strong cultural heritage were countered by levels of exploitation and poverty imposed on its people since colonial times.

Alfi went on to study painting in Yogyakarta at the Indonesia Institute of the Arts (Institut Seni Indonesia). In the mid-1990s he formed the Jendela Art Group together with the Yogyakarta-based painters Handiwirman Saputra, Yusra Martunus, Rudi Mantofani, Yunizar and M. Irfan. In contrast to the direct socio-political critique in the works of artists such as Dadang Christanto, the Jendela group’s focus was on aesthetic exploration within a more formalist and personal territory.

For Alfi this meant the freedom to explore and incorporate references from every dimension of his existence: whether his own childhood memories, Sumatran culture, his affinity for German Expressionism and Renaissance art, or the music of Pink Floyd. Symbolic motifs drawn from these dimensions, such as skulls, cacti, rocks and scribbled words appear frequently in Alfi’s oeuvre. In his recent works, such as the Achilles series and the Blackboard series of paintings Alfi adopts an almost photorealist style, creating layered references of history, questioning what is remembered and what is forgotten, and how much the future direction is dictated by the past. In his monumental cast sculpture Monument (2012), Alfi points to the possibility of hope in the form of a cactus growing out of a barren rock. The artist cast the rock from the pulverized dust of rocks recovered from the dangerous eruption of Mount Merapi in 2010.

Has been with Sin Sin Fine Art since 2008.

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