Suvi Wahyudianto graduated from Visual Arts Education of the State University of Surabaya. Currently, he resides in Yogyakarta. He partakes in a number of exhibitions such as S.E.A Focus at UOB Plaza, Singapore; Pameran Besar Seni Rupa 6 in the City of Batu; and Manifesto 6 at at the National Gallery of Indonesia, Jakarta (2018). Additionally, he also earned several awards one of which is the 2018 UOB Southeast Asian Painting of the Year, Singapore. Suvi creates artworks based on his personal experiences or memories as well as his observation on the correlation between the realities of the daily life and its underlying historical events.
He is one of the artists participating in the Residensi Kelana Sungai program in Pontianak, West Kalimantan. He also visited several places outside Pontianak during the program, such as Sambas. As a Madurese, the journey was emotionally-provocative and risky for him. The reason is that there was an outbreak of inter-ethnic violence in some parts of Kalimantan 20 years ago and Sambas was one of the badly stricken areas. The impact of such a violence, a rule forbidding Madurese to enter Sambas was passed on.
Suvi was not only presenting his experiences through his artworks, but also his understanding on the interactions he engaged in throughout the journey, both with the Madurese people who had been relocated to regions outside Sambas and the Dayak as well as Malay people. Among them were those directly impacted by the conflict and those who learned the stories from the previous generation. Suvi takes us back to that time and reminds us that the only thing wars do is just bringing out sadness, fatalities, pain, and sorrow.
