Global Impact on the Survival of Wayang Kulit ... - Siew Lian Lim

aspects of it in other arts, primarily visual art, which has been the practice of the researcher.
One significant visual artist influenced by Wayang Kulit is Aris A Yaacob (Yaacob blogspot).
He studied painting and print-making with Malaysian-French educated artist, Mansor Ibrahim,
from 1994-1996 and then moved to Britain in 1996 to study architecture (Leeds). However, his
interest was more in art, so he earned a Masters degree in Scenography (time-based art namely
puppetry) from Wimbledon School of Art, London in 2000. At that time he co-founded the Doo-
Lali Group with poet Rozmanshah Abdullah and puppeteer Patrizia Adami Suter. Yaacob’s
work in London frequently referenced Wayang Kulit. In 2009, he put on a nine-week exhibition,
High Priest: The Songs of Destruction at Liverpool Novas Contemporary Urban Centres
(Yaacob blogspot). This exhibition included drawings, paintings and a performance piece
reinterpreting a wayang performance. In his statement for the show, Yaacob states that his goal
is to break “…the boundary of visual and performance art, freeing the space and separation.” In
2006, Yaacob put on a live art presentation based on Wayang Kulit at a night club in London.
This was not a modernized Wayang Kulit performance but rather “live art” in which he produced
spontaneous paintings in front of an audience. "I love painting and I love performing, so I
combine the two." Yaacob has since earned his Ph.D and is now teaching at University Science
of Malaysia, Penang, School of the Arts.
Aris A Yaacob, Live Art
Two artists from Yogyakarta, Java's main center for Wayang Kulit and also Indonesia's
major art center as home to the Institut Seni Indonesia Yogyakarta (ISI, Indonesia Institute of the
Arts, Yogyakarta) are among those whose art has incorporated and been inspired by Indonesian
Wayang Kulit, and both have exhibited their work worldwide including the U.S. One is Heri
Dono , who graduated from ISI in 1987, which was followed by a year of being trained in
Wayang Kulit by a leading Yogyakarta dalang, Sukasman (Heri Dono). Since then he has served
in a series of residencies worldwide, including Hong Kong, Japan, Australia, Switzerland,
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