FX Harsono was born in 1949 in Blitar (East Java), Indonesia and lives and works in Jakarta, Indonesia. He was educated at the Jakarta Art Institute, Jakarta, Indonesia and Sekolah Tinggi Seni Rupa Indonesi (STSRI “ASRI”), Yogyakarta, Indonesia. In recognition of his decades long “commitment to art and to freedom of expression in art,” Harsono was awarded the Joseph Balestier Award for the Freedom of Art in 2015, presented by the US embassy in Singapore, and in 2014 he was given the Prince Klaus Award honoring his “crucial role in Indonesia’s contemporary art scene for forty years.” His work has been shown in over 100 exhibitions around the world, including the seminal Traditions/Tensions: Contemporary Art in Asia at Asia Society in New York (1996), and the first Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in Brisbane, Australia (1993). The Singapore Art Museum mounted a major career retrospective, FX Harsono: Testimonies, in 2010. He presented his first solo exhibition in the United States, Writing in the Rain, at Tyler Rollins Fine Art in 2012. Recent biennials include Indonesia’s Jogja Biennale (2013) and the 2016 Sydney Biennale.