Untitled (terraced land)

Credit line: Collection of SMU

Dani Iswardana (b. 1973, Indonesia) is an artist based in Solo, and founder of performing arts group Wayang Beber Kota.

In late 2009, he was one of nine artists participating in the SMU-ASEAN Artist Residency Programme in partnership with The Substation and supported by National Youth Council. The residency was in conjunction with the SMU Arts Festival and the university's tenth-anniversary celebrations. The nine artists were artist-in-residence for periods of two weeks to a month each, and would operate from a bare studio at the SMU Concourse. The studio was a converted retail space and would be where the artists worked, had consultations with students who were involved in the project and also making works, host visitors, and conducted workshops.

In this painting, one in a series of four, the artist adopts and reinterprets the tradition and style of wayang beber, a form of Indonesian narrative theatre that precedes wayang kulit, in his illustrations exploring the complexities of everyday life in contemporary Indonesia. His works usually visually narrate the impact of modernisation and urbanisation, telling stories of the commercialisation and privatisation of village water supplies by bottling companies, remorseless urbanisation of the village economy, erosion of the old village spirit of community by modernity, the young leaving the village for the city to find employment, farmers using chemicals to fertilise the soil and felling trees to build homes and so on.