In this poetic video installation, the artist's act of writing his own name becomes a reclamation of erased identity.
At the center of this solo presentation by FX Harsono (b. 1949), one of Indonesia’s most important contemporary artists, is a powerful, multi-part video installation. In this six-minute film, Harsono explores memory, identity, and rediscovery in the aftermath of state oppression. While rooted in a specific history of government repression, the work carries continued resonance today, as language and appearance continue to serve as markers of discrimination.
More than a historical record, Harsono’s work conveys the personal and collective trauma of cultural erasure through symbolic imagery: the artist paints his forbidden Chinese birth name on glass in the rain, while three children’s desks evoke classrooms where Chinese language instruction was banned under Indonesia’s Suharto regime (1967–1998). Writing in the Rain chronicles the artist’s journey to relearn and reclaim his language as an adult, transforming a painful history of persecution into a poetic act of recovery.
Image: Writing in the Rain, 2011, by FX Harsono, installation view at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, June 2026. Color digital video, sound; wood. Asian Art Museum, Museum purchase, Mortimer-Harvey Fund, 2019.70a-d2. Photograph by David Armstrong, © Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.
