Agugn Prabowo

Agugn Prabowo

Artist Biography

Agung Prabowo aka Agugn (born Bandung 1985) graduated with a Graphic Art major at the Faculty of Art and Design ITB. He has explored various printmaking techniques, mostly linocut, and has also worked to push the boundaries between printmaking and installation. Fear, nature and shamanistic cultures have driven him to make art with anthropomorphic and psychoanalytic perspectives. He held his first solo exhibition, Natural Mystic, in Bentara Budaya Jakarta, Yogyakarta, Solo and Bali, as part of his first prize for the Triennial Seni Grafis Indonesia 4 in 2012. His next solo show was in 2015 at Jogja Contemporary, titled Unguarded guards and in 2016, AGUGN: Printing Live in the Cosmos at Vinyl on Vinyl, Manila. His latest solo show, Molasses, was at Mizuma Gallery, Singapore in 2017. He has been in many group exhibitions internationally, including Termasuk: Contemporary art from Indonesia at Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney in 2019, Multi-layered - New Print 2018/Summer at the International Print Centre, New York in 2018, and  Java-Art Energy at Institut des Cultures Islam, Paris in 2018, where he showed his installation that had been previously displayed in 2017 in Re Emergence at Selasar Sunaryo Artspace, Bandung.

Human supremacy

After my latest exhibition in Tokyo, there’s an urge in myself to develop my visual language into a more critical point of view through humanity that can impact roles in the ecosystems within nature.

The theme of the work I will show in this exhibition is Human Supremacy. Over the centuries, humans have regarded themselves as predominant above other beings. This realization came to me after a pandemic hit, and as we all know this virus is a zoonotic disease - a disease that moved from animal to human. It’s obvious that how we treat non-humans has come to backfire to us. From a wider perspective, Covid-19 and other zoonotic diseases can be prevented in the first place by respecting non-human existence. Since we live on the same planet, there should be a way to coexist if humans respect non-human animals.

It became clear to me that human supremacy doesn’t help humanity itself - rather destroys it and other living beings in its path.

In this new linocut print with copper leaves on handmade recycled paper, I depict a two-headed human, with four arms holding an entangled snake and his four feet crossed by a meditation-like gesture. This works symbolizes humanity’s superior feelings in controlling civilization.

SELECTED WORKS