Arahmaiani Sold at Auction Prices

Installation Artist, b. 1961 -

Arahmaiani (Arahmayani Feisal, born May 21, 1961) is an Indonesian artist born in Bandung and based in Yogyakarta, Central Java, Indonesia. Arahmaiani is considered by many to be one of the most respected and iconic contemporary artists, specifically in pioneering performance art in Southeast Asia. Arahmaiani frequently uses art as a means of critical commentary on social, religion, gender and cultural issues.

Arahmaiani was born in Bandung, Indonesia on May 21, 1961. Her father was an Islamic scholar and her mother is of Javanese Hindu-Buddhist Extraction. Her name represents the syncretic mixture of two different cultures that she experienced in her upbringing. As she readily explains that "Arahma" goes back to the Arabic word meaning "loving“ while "iani/yani“ comes from a Hindi word meaning "human being“. As a child, Feisal was ambitious about growing up to become a prophet. When revealing her aspirations to her father, he quickly dismissed her, noting that, "only men can be prophets."

As an art student she felt let down by the educational system in her country because it did not connect her with real life. So she decided to create her own art on the streets and discovered in an intuitive way what performance art was all about. Feisal's indignation of Indonesia's academic system and it's dismissal of art studies eventually lead to her departure from her home country in the early 1980s. She would later utilize this underlying distain for Indonesia's academic practices through her performative artwork.

Although many refer to Arahmaiani as a feminist artist, Feisal does not accept this label, stating that, "The feminist label, without any further contextualization, would not encapsulate the multidimensionality of the work, which itself reflects the complex interweaving between class, culture, religion and the natural environment in Indonesia and elsewhere."

Arahmaiani studied at the Faculty of Fine Art and Design, Bandung Institute of Technology and finished her study in 1992. She also went to the Academie voor Beeldende Kunst, Enschede, the Netherlands in 1983 and Paddington Art School, Sydney, Australia in 1985