
Photo by Elisabeth Desiana Mayasari (ED Mayasari)
Timoteus Anggawan Kusno is a visual artist and filmmaker who composes and expands his works in various mediums, including installations and institutional interventions. He renders narratives stretching in the liminality of fiction, history, imagination, and memory. Kusno draws questions on the coloniality of power and what remains left unseen. He often uses the (meta)fictional approach to reflect the medium’s role in narratology. He reflexively and critically examines the subtle signification of editing and production structure. By this method, he questions “history-making” and its relation to power, ideology, and “ignorance.”
He has been commissioned and shown his work internationally in several cultural institutions and biennales, including the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, the Netherlands; the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) Seoul, South Korea; Mumbai City Museum, India; the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) Taipei Taiwan; Center for Fine Art Brussels, Belgium; Biennale Jogja XIV Equator #4: Indonesia-Brazil, 13th Gwangju Biennale, South Korea, and Videonale 19, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany, among others. In 2021, Kusno was honored with the Video Production Award from the Han Nefkens Foundation – Loop Barcelona, collaborating with the Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona; Inside-Out Art Museum, Beijing; MoCA Taipei; ILHAM Gallery, Kuala Lumpur; Centre d’Art Contemporain, Genève and Art Hub Copenhagen. In 2023, he received the VISIO – European Programme on Artists’ Moving Images production grant, co-produced with Lo Schermo dell’arte and Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato, Italy. In 2024, he was awarded with Mondriaan Fonds and won the Locarno Residency at the Locarno Film Festival. His films has been screened at international film festivals including CPH:DOX Copenhagen, IFFR Rotterdam, VideoEx Zurich, among others. Along with his artistic practice, since 2013, he has also been developing the Centre for Tanah Runcuk Studies. This (fictional) institution project conducts experimental studies on a (lost) territory in the Dutch East Indies called Tanah Runcuk, involving historians, ethnographers, fellow artists, curators, and writers. He lives and works between Amsterdam (NL) and Yogyakarta (ID).
Profile picture and bio courtesy of the artist.
Writings:
Boiling Point, Features, Artforum, Vol. 63, No. 3, NOVEMBER 2024