Albert Yonathan Setyawan
By Tarun Nagesh
‘11th Asia Pacific Triennial’ August 2024
Albert Yonathan Setyawan
Born 1983, Bandung, Indonesia
Lives and works in Tokyo, Japan
Albert Yonathan Setyawan’s practice centres on ceramic installations that manifest in spectacular wall and floor-based arrangements of varying scale and form. The works primarily consist of repeated forms created through a slip-cast method. In this process, the original objects are replicated using a mould, often more than 1000 times, in a process the artist describes as ‘art labour’. For Setyawan, this repeated, labour-intensive practice is meditative — a key ethos of his practice that emphasises the physicality of handmade objects.
Spires of undifferentiated being 2023–24 consists of two symbols — a flame and a hand — that explore the process of creating the work itself, as well as Setyawan’s philosophy of his practice. The flame symbolises the process that transforms clay into a pervasive material, and, by extension, human evolution as a material process that traverses cultures and time.


Albert Yonathan Setyawan's Spires of Undifferentiated Being (details) 2023–24, installed at GOMA for the 11th Asia Pacific Triennial, November 2024 / Terracotta / Commissioned for APT11 / Purchased 2024 with funds from Tim Fairfax AC through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / © Albert Yonathan Setyawan / Photographs: J Ruckli, QAGOMA