Artistic Negotiation of Balinese Cosmology in Contemporary Art: The Case of I Wayan Upadana
Description
This article examines the artistic practice of contemporary Balinese artist I Wayan Upadana through an analysis of several works in the exhibition Misty Myths as well as some works from earlier periods. Previous studies have generally interpreted Upadana’s works through the lenses of cultural identity, tourism, and social criticism, yet they have paid limited attention to Balinese cosmology as an active epistemological framework in contemporary art practice. This study aims to explain how Upadana negotiates Balinese cosmology through material exploration, visual representation, and symbolic construction in response to contemporary cultural transformations. The study employs a qualitative visual analysis approach and hermeneutic interpretation, using Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Philosophical Hermeneutics as the primary theory, Stuart Hall’s Theory of Representation to analyze the formation of visual meaning, and Tri Hita Karana and Rwa Bhineda as local epistemological frameworks. The results of the study indicate that Upadana’s works do not merely represent Balinese cosmology but reinterpret and negotiate it through material strategies, symbolic configurations, and contemporary visual language. This study proposes the concept of “Artistic Negotiation of Balinese Cosmology” as a conceptual framework for understanding how local cosmological knowledge is hermeneutically interpreted and reconstructed through contemporary art practices.