Yogyakarta's Heri Dono wins Prince Claus Award

JAKARTA (JP): A Yogyakarta artist, Heri Dono, has won a US$20,000 Prince Claus Award from the Dutch government.

The award was presented by the Dutch ambassador to Indonesia, Baron Schelto van Heemstra, at Karta Pusaka, the Indonesian- Netherlands cultural center in Yogyakarta, on Friday.

Born in Jakarta in 1960, Dono is an unconventional artist, who links Indonesian traditions with a contemporary idiom in an innovative fashion, according to a statement from the Dutch embassy.

His work includes drawings, paintings, installations, and performances. It addresses social and political issues through absurdist imagery and displays great openness toward art forms which are outside the accepted disciplines of the visual arts.

Last year, two Indonesians, art critic Jim Supangkat and Sardono W. Kusumo, a dancer and choreographer, received the Prince Claus Award.

The Prince Claus Fund was founded on Sep. 6, 1996 on the occasion of the 70th birthday of Prince Claus of the Netherlands. The Prince Claus Fund promotes and supports activities in the fields of culture and development. The emphasis is on countries in Asia, Latin America, and in particular, Africa.

Prince Claus of the Netherlands also consented to present the principal award of $100,000 and 13 prizes of $20,000 each.

This year's principal award was presented to three leading figures in the field of African fashion design: Alhadi (Niger), Oumou Sy (Senegal), and Tetteh Adzedu (Ghana). The other award winners included Rakhshan Bani-Etemad (film-maker, Iran), Jean- Baptiste Kiethaga (archeologist, Burkina Faso), and Rogelio Salmona (architect, Colombia).