I Gusti Ayu Kadek Murniasih’s (b. 1966 in Bali; d. 2006 in Bali) paintings depict vivid, surreal images of sexual pleasure; hybrid gender-bending forms; and trauma. At night, Murni was said to wake from her dreams, feverishly painting the visions she saw: undulating phalluses that incited both humor and pleasure, sharp claw-like forms that threatened pain, and personified amorphous creatures often inspired by local symbols and myths.
Born in Bali, Murni moved extensively throughout Indonesia, first with her family to South Sulawesi as part of the Transmigration Program initiated by Dutch colonial powers, then to Jakarta as a domestic worker in her youth, ultimately ending up in Ubud, where she continued her work in domestic labor and learned the traditional, male-dominated Pengosekan style of Balinese painting. Murni’s migrations were deeply entwined with experiences of sexual trauma, physical abuse, marriage, divorce, infertility, and sickness. These personal and gendered experience are reflected in her signature adaptation of vernacular Balinese painting, embracing its flat colorful planes and bold figuration to portray explicitly sexual, violent, and absurd imagery that spoke to the perspectives of women just as President Suharto’s New Order regime—and its gender-based inequalities—was coming to a close.
