Artist Page for Gajah Gallery - Art Jakarta Gardens, 2025 (23rd April, Wednesday)

Dini Nur Aghnia

(b. 1995, Gresik, Indonesia)

Dini Nur Aghnia’s artistic practice reflects a profound exploration of the daily glories found in her natural surroundings and deep fascination with the landscapes of Yogyakarta, Indonesia — from the rugged mountains to the sprawling fields that shift with the passing light and ever-changing time of day.

Employing negative space and incorporating handicraft materials, such as beads, clay, and textiles as medium - the artist captures and reconstructs her humbling experiences and views of nature in a unique and unconventional manner. Pushing the boundaries of traditional landscape painting, Dini forgoes rendering with photorealistic precision and rather reimagines the scene through her inner world and subjectivity - creating a visual language that evokes a sense of memory.

“Dini’s work also discusses a perspective, a contemplation on life, that finds relevance beyond the immediate context of her hometown in Indonesia. It is a work that stands at the intersections of body, mind and culture.”
— Eya Beldia (Gajah Gallery) on Dini Nur Aghnia’s The Sun Goes Down

The Space Between The Swells
2025, Fabric Scraps, 67 x 84 cm

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In her latest works, Dini Nur Aghnia has turned to embrace the materiality of textiles. The familiar contours of hills and rivers reveal themselves through the quilt-like assemblage of The Space Between the Swells - where fabric scraps are pieced together, in a grid, to compose the recollections of a landscape scene.

“The practice of sculpting natural clay is a unique process, and in it, I find a rather uncanny parallel to the way in which the screens we encounter today also comprise of these coloured pixels.”
— Eya Beldia (Gajah Gallery) on Dini Nur Aghnia’s The Sun Goes Down

Step to Shore
2025, Fabric Scraps, 76 x 55 cm

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Fragments of some mountainous landscape unfolds in Dini Nur Aghnia’s Step to Shore in a puzzle-like formation. By forgoing the creation of a complete, whole representation, each uneven visual segment is meant to serve only as a partial, fleeting impression to reflect on how memories and occurances are encapsulated and remembered in our minds.

Jalan Terbit (Dawning Road)
2021, Clay Flour on Canvas Board, 200 x 122 cm

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Intensely vivid and bright, Jalan Terbit (Dawning Road) bursts with the vibrant warm hues of red, orange, and yellow - it is a celebration of the first appearance of light in the sky before sunrise. Here, Dini Nur Aghnia highlights the often overlooked small and quiet miracles that we should be grateful for in each passing day.

Kaleidoskop Telaga Warna (Kaleidoscope of Telaga Warna)
2024, Beads and Resin on Canvas, 100 x 80.5 cm

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Exploring the interplay between how the eye perceives form and how the mind recalls memories, Kaleidoskop Telaga Warna (Kaleidoscope of Telaga Warna) exemplifies Dini Nur Aghnia’s artistic approach to her beloved Indonesian landscape. In her almost prismatic arrangement of beads and resins, the picturesque beauty and mystical atmosphere of Telaga Warna, a colour-changing lake in Central Java, is encapsulated, with all its natural wonder.

Down the Road
2021, Clay on Canvas, 63.5 x 120 cm

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The impression of a way slightly trails across the horizontal plane of Down the Road, incorporating a sense of narrative into the lush green landscape. Dini’s compositions often evoke a sense of nostalgia and longing as simultaneously they invite viewers to immerse themselves in the ephemeral subtleties of the captured moment - emphasising the irreplaceable wonder of every passing scene.