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= IGAK Murniasih =

I Gusti Ayu Kadek (IGAK) Murniasih (also known as Murni; 1966-2006) was a Balinese self-taught female artist, and was one of the few Balinese women artists to have entered the mainstream Indonesian art scene. Although initially taught a Pengosekan style of painting by renowned Bali painter, I Dewa Putu Mokoh, Murni subsequently developed her own style, featuring simple and bold outlines on brightly coloured monochromatic backgrounds. Her paintings' subject matter primarily focused on notions of female desires and sexualities, as well as pleasure, violence and trauma, expressed and represented through disembodied female body parts and sexual organs, together with everyday objects.

Her works have been hailed as both celebratory of Balinese women's creativity and strength, and highlighting the imbalance between gender relations in Bali. This is understood in considerations of her works situated in the contexts of Bali, where sex is commodified and an obsession, yet a woman's body is considered sacred in a prison of narcissistic passion; the wider predominantly Muslim society of Indonesia, where sex and sexuality is hardly discussed openly, and coupled with Murni's experience of sexual violence and her success despite many hardships she had to face. In addition, in modern Indonesia, women's sexuality is hardly explored or negotiated with by women artists. It was only until the late 1990s to 2000s that critical responses and acceptance of women's work in the visual arts, literature and cinema made their appearance and more appreciated, including Murni's artworks.

She passed away from cancer at the young age of 40, on 11 January 2006 in Ubud, Bali.

Background
Murni was born in Tabanan, Bali in May 21, 1966, and was the tenth child of farmers. Her family later relocated to South Sulawesi as part of the Indonesian government's transmigration project then. She later moved to Makassar and worked as a domestic helper for a Chinese-Indonesian family and later relocated with them to Jakarta. She subsequently returned to Bali in 1987, where she found work with a jeweler-silversmith.

At this time, she also married but subsequently filed for divorce when her husband took a second wife to have children. A woman filing for divorce then was a move that defied traditional rules and the local traditional adat law, and Murni was only granted the divorce in 1993, after her husband filed for a divorce.

She subsequently moved to Ubud, where she learnt the Pengosekan style of painting, a new genre that arose in the 1980s, which depicted flora and fauna in a naturalistic manner, rather than non-naturalistic coloured paintings. Her teacher for this Pengosekan style was renowned painter, I Dewa Putu Mokoh, who was himself a reformer in Balinese art. She subsequently developed her own style, featuring simple and bold outlines on brightly coloured monochromatic backgrounds.

Murni later joined Seniwati Gallery, which was a women-only gallery based in Ubud, Bali. Here, Murni's works were introduced by the gallery owner, Mary Northmore-Aziz to the gallery's visitors, who included curators and art critics.

She also met the Italian artist, Mondo Zanulini, who was based in Bali and within Mokoh's social circle, of which Mokoh, Mondo and Murni often painted together. Mondo later became Murni's life partner, and actively supported Murni until the end of her life. Mondo described her as one that 'was the most incredible and creative of the three of us.'

While Murni was often considered a pioneer of feminist art in Bali, she did not harbour such political perspectives or agendas, but rather, sought to exist and shed the trauma that was inflicted on her at the young age of 9, due to her father's sexual assault on her. However, she also acknowledged that without this, she may not have become the artist and person she became.

She passed away from cancer at age 40 on 11 January 2006 in Ubud, Bali.

Art practices, compositions and styles
Murni first made her appearance in the arts scene as an artist in 1992, expressing her imaginary world and her woman's self via her extraordinary talent. Her technique often did not follow any preconceived principle of composition, but allowed her imagination to attach to anything, allowing a style or manner that is naive, yet odd and surreal, with lines that are often curved, scarce and expressive. She employed linear and the figurative in her painting to explore contemporary issues of gender politics and place, and first began with painting pointy woman's shoes, an object that she perceived as both feminine and universal. She subsequently ventured to explore expressing and painting parts of her body.

Her works predominantly explored facets of women's sexuality. These included a woman's struggle from being a passive sexual object to an active sexual subject, the vulnerable feminine sides, as well as the paradox of sexual domination between male and female. She also often directly expressed her life experiences, nightmares and traumas, as well as her erotic tendencies and desires on both canvas and everyday speech and jokes, defying traditional taboos and social mores. These were translated into art compositions which comprised not of a whole female body, but parts that were disjunct and combined, featuring breasts, vaginas, phalluses and others. At times, her paintings also depicted sexual intercourse in variants and symbols, interpreted as Murni acknowledging her body as feminine, sexual and motherly yet ironically marginal.

On the other hand, her works also point to an almost narcissistic side of women's sexuality, with a desire to reclaim a body often raped or under the mercy of others' pleasures. Murni hence sought to reclaim her body for herself through an apparent 'copulating with each of her own organs', in an attempt to transcend her pain, rather than appearing as a young, angry woman.

As Murni was inventive and curious to try new things, she also ventured into sculpture-making and mask-making.

Artistic career
Murni's artistic career started out with meeting rejections from some of the best galleries in Ubud, due to perceived insufficient education, or fear that she may potentially disappoint wealthy, conservative customers with her compositions.

She later joined Seniwati Gallery, a women-only gallery based in Ubud, Bali in 1995. Here, Murni's works were introduced by the gallery owner, Mary Northmore-Aziz, to the gallery's visitors, who included curators and art critics. She was subsequently invited to joint and solo exhibitions with Cemeti Art House, and Nadi Gallery in Indonesia, and internationally, including Hong Kong, Japan, Cambodia, Thailand, Spain, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands.

Shortly before she passed away in 2006, Murni and Mondo also had a joint exhibition at the Italian Institute in Jakarta.

In recent years, her works have increasingly garnered attention and recognition from various regional museums, galleries, and private collectors, and have also been included in exhibitions at the National Gallery of Australia in 2019, as well as Gajah Gallery Singapore in 2021.

Reception of her works
Murni's works depicting seemingly monstrous feminine figures, such as a toothed vagina and medusa-like objects, have been described as absurd, violent, surreal, honest and humorous. Not surprisingly, it was also often met with heated discussions and controversies, and described as 'dirty', 'perverse', and 'immoral'. Such descriptions however reduce her work to a crude inventory of sex, since she was painting vicissitudes of life rather than mere sex.

At the same time, her art was also mostly welcomed and appreciated not merely by a small group of contemporary art aficionados, but also received praise from writers, critics and journalists.

Writer and long-term Bali resident, Jean Couteau, described Murni's artistic styles in this manner: 'Some of the objects she presents in her work are rarely named, and more rarely shown: penis, vagina, lower lips; and as for the scenes she depicts, they make one's hair rise: there is not only the 'regular' position of love making, but also 'standing love', male and female fellatio, self-fellatio, penetration by alien objects, rubbing by objects that are not alien anymore, masturbation, sucking, kissing and hugging of all sorts and manners, and more.'

Her art has been recognised as the most authentic, daring and inspiring, with her use of daring and almost naive use of visual language. It is also direct, as she painted what she experienced or imagined, with wild, absurdist, or sometimes eerie images combining both pain and terror. Some of such images were of a sow or scissors between her legs, or terror linked to femininity through the painting of elegant pointed women's shoes.

Murni's works have also been described by Indonesian art historian and curator, Wulan Dirgantoro, as a combination of playfulness, violence and humour. They have also been read alongside notions of Barbara Creed's 'monstrous feminine' and Julia Kristeva's notion of 'abjection' in comparison to the Calon Arang, a female widow-witch in Balinese mythology. In so doing, Dirgantoro described how while Murni may not have intended for her works to challenge patriarchy, they nevertheless hold potential to reveal patriarchy's discomforts towards female expressions of feminine desires, and pose a challenge to the male gaze in Indonesian visual arts. Importantly, Murni's subject matter and representations of the female body and desires bring to the fore what is otherwise often considered a private domain, allowing discussions on the female body and desire within the Indonesian visual art field.

Exhibitions and art shows
Murni's works have appeared in numerous group exhibitions in Indonesia and overseas since 1995 and posthumously.