Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain is honoured to present an exhibition of works by Ari Bayuaji from his "Weaving the Ocean" (2020-ongoing) series entitled "The Ocean Called Home".
His series transforms the jetsam of plastic ropes disentangled from the roots of mangrove trees along the coast of Indonesia into hauntingly beautiful tapestries. Ari Bayuaji is inspired not only by the rich textile culture of the artist’s homeland, but also by the weaving cultures from many different countries worldwide as a living heritage.
Aesthetically engaging, Bayuaji's tapestries result from a creative salvage and up-cycling process that saw the artist and locally recruited assistants scour the shoreline of Bali to collect and clean plastic ropes that washed up on shore and then unravelled them into fine colourful threads. In collaboration with a traditional Balinese weaving workshop, Bayuaji designs and creates unique textile pieces in an environmentally conscious way that has provided financial security to local crafts persons and economies since the beginning of the global pandemic. Bayuaji's equally stunning sculptural practice also draws upon the ocean's detritus as source material - including ropes, minerals and other elements that wash up on shore.
For 'The Ocean Called Home,' a solo exhibition at Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain, Bayuaji has created sculptural artworks inspired by forms found in nature and architecture. He employs many materials traditionnally used as building materials, such as copper, wood, plywood, etc., integrated with the artweave (woven artworks) pieces.
For Bayuaji, nature and architecture are the foundations of the notion of "home" for humanity and for other species. We are all connected. Every drop of water that runs within the water pipes of our homes would impact our lands, rivers, and oceans.
We invite the visitors to peruse the extraordinary documents about the series in the links below.
BIO
Ari Bayuaji was born in Indonesia in 1975. Moving permanently to Canada in 2005, he studied Fine Arts at Concordia University (2005-2010). Dividing his time between Montreal and Bali, the artist is known mainly for his art installations, which incorporate found and ready-made objects in various parts of the world, thereby exposing himself to the multiple mechanisms of different cultures.
Bayuaji is an expert in conveying aspects of daily life. His works usually try to show the overlooked artistic value in everyday life through objects and places and their societal roles. He has consistently used found/old objects from around the world as the material and subject matter in almost all of his artworks. These objects used as his creative material may be old and discarded. Still, Bayuaji injects emotion in work that is influenced by the contemporary issues he seeks to address so that the "content" as a work of art is entirely new.
His artwork has been collected by major institutions such as Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, la Musée national des beaux-arts du Quebec (Canada), Musée Pointe-à-Callière (Montreal), la Fondation Agnès B. du Paris, the Coral Triangle Center of Bali, Precious Plastic of Bangkok, and Danfoss (Denmark).
His work has been exhibited in international solo exhibitions, including Mizuma Art Gallery of Singapore (2023), Warin Lab Contemporary in Bangkok, Thailand (2022), Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts Singapore (2022), RedBase Art Gallery of Sydney, Australia (2022), Coral Triangle Center of Bali, Indonesia (2022), The Esplanade Theatre on The Bay, Singapore (2014 and 2019), NunuFine Art Taipei, Taiwan (2018, 2021), Parkhaus in Malkasten Düsseldorf (2018), Conseil des arts de Montréal (2018), a collaboration with Agnès B. Fondation Paris in Ste-Alvère, France (2017), and Kunsthal Rotterdam in The Netherlands (2017).
Artwork from Ari's "Weaving The Ocean" project was recently featured as part of the Kennedy Center's RiverRun festival in Washington, DC (2023). Just recently, in early June 2023, Ari Bayuaji created a major installation work for the Kempinski Hotel of Bali, Indonesia, in partnership with the hotel for their 2023-24 programming focus on 'sustainability.' The artist will next be creating significant installation works for the Cheongju Crafts Biennale 2023 and Busan Sea Art Festival 2023, both in South Korea.
