After Pieta

Appropriating a popular theme in Western Art, Eko Nugroho applies his trademark graphic style that draws from street art and comic books, in the textile work, After Pieta, (2015). In Christian art, the Pietà was an allegory for compassion, embodied by the Virgin Mary sorrowfully contemplating the dead body her son Jesus. Nugroho contemplates maternal love in his contemporary rendition of the theme, but in the cuts that seem to cover the figures, he also suggests that all love must also  involve pain. 

As part of the generation of artists that found its voice during the period of political upheaval following the fall of the Suharto regime in the late 1990s, Nugroho is a contemporary artist from Yogyakarta Indonesia whose works encompass diverse media, from paintings, murals, comic books, shadow puppet theatre, and textile works. His practice takes on a social aspect through the close collaboration with his local community in the creation and production of his embroidery works.