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Lot description
Heri Dono delights in turning Javanese folklore upside down and inside out. Upside Down Mind captures that mischief on a compact sheet of Saunders paper, 53 × 59cm, dry-point etched during his STPI residency and later shown in Zaman Edan (The Age Of Craziness) in Singapore. The plate teems with topsy-turvy creatures. A lone acrobat dangles headfirst while a huge noggin stamped "ARTIST" floats overhead, its wide grin part sage, part clown. Around them, cartoon talons, masks and mechanical appendages jostle for space. Dono's sinuous line borrows from wayang kulit shadow puppetry but his imagery leaps toward comic-book absurdity. Viewers can almost hear the whoosh of the trapeze, the squawk of startled birds, the cackle of a trickster who knows power hates to be laughed at. An upside-down gaze, Dono suggests, is the sharpest way to see the world's contradictions. That same buoyant irreverence has carried Heri Dono from Jakarta's experimental scene to the Venice and São Paulo biennales: proof that a good laugh, properly aimed, can topple even the sturdiest certainties.