I Gusti Ayu Kadek Murniasih

(b. 1966-2006, Tabanan, Bali, Indonesia)  

As a child, I Gusti Ayu Kadek Murniasih (Murni) followed her family when they relocated to Makassar, Sulawesi, as part of a transmigration programme. She returned to Bali in 1987 and settled in Ubud, where she trained under painter I Dewa Putu Mokoh, adopting and later subverting the Pengosekan style of painting. By 1992, she began introducing the Balinese art world to her extraordinary talent, unveiling an intensely personal and vividly imagined world that centred on female identity and lived experience. From 1995 onwards, she participated in numerous group exhibitions in Indonesia and internationally, with solo shows at the Seniwati Gallery of Art by Women in Ubud (1995), as well as in Australia, Italy, and Hong Kong’s Fringe Club (1998). She passed away in Ubud, Bali, on 11 January 2006.

Murni’s work was initially met with criticism, dismissed as ‘dirty’, ‘perverse’, and ‘immoral’. Yet, to categorise her practice merely as an explicit exploration of sexuality is to reduce its complexity. She did not paint sex; she painted life—infused with the objects, emotions, and experiences that surrounded her. Through her unfiltered imagination, the ordinary became extraordinary, transformed by a raw and instinctive visual language that defied convention. Beneath her metaphors and symbols lay a deeply personal narrative—one that explored her identity, her environment, and the multitudes of her femininity.

Murni’s technique was as compelling as her vision. She followed no rigid compositional principles, instead allowing forms to emerge intuitively. Her canvases eschewed predictable structures—figures and objects might materialise from unexpected corners, or swell and distort at the heart of the composition. Unrestrained by moral or religious codes, her work possessed a surreal naivety, where curved lines and sparse, expressive strokes evoked a sense of both vulnerability and defiance.

Murni’s legacy endures as a radical and singular voice in Indonesian contemporary art—one that reshaped the visual discourse on female agency, desire, and self-expression.