In 2012, Yunizar co-founded the Yogya Art Lab in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, together with Gajah’s director Jasdeep Sandhu, both of whom were determined to provide a space for artists in Southeast Asia to experiment with new materials and processes, with the careful guidance of artisans in Yogyakarta. Observing that the team at YAL could successfully realise his sculptural visions, Yunizar began producing his arresting cast bronze sculptures, beginning with roughly textured human figures in awkward, comedic poses.

Since then, Yunizar carefully expanded his sculptural engagements: from creating a full-body, frail-looking human figure with an assertive pose; busts with similar dominant stances engraved with enigmatic symbols of birds and skulls; to bold, double-faced human figures imbued with psychological depths and humour.

Art historian T.K. Sabapathy writes incisively on what makes Yunizar’s figural sculptures unique:

The figures in his sculptural repertoire symbolically bear recognizable psychological traits, social and cultural affiliations . . . The relief-formation of the figures tend to compress the extents and impact of these attributes; they are seen discreetly and not declaratively as they would if figurations are conceived volumetrically, with surfaces curving and inflected convexly and solid forms are pierced and opened. Yunizar’s sculpted figures are existentially ambivalent even as they are materially substantial.

T.K. Sabapathy, “On Seeing Yunizar’s Sculptures,” Yunizar: New Perspectives, 2022

Tall Woman is one of the first large-scale female figures in his sculptural practice, modelled in 2016 and cast in 2022.