Born in Padang, Indonesia, Indra Dodi earned his bachelor’s degree in fine arts at the Indonesian Institute of Arts in Yogyakarta.

Childlike but bold and expressive, Dodi’s oeuvre retains a quintessential Indonesian rawness. His art conveys the angst of growing up: a bittersweet phase where one struggles to grapple with the change from a wide-eyed child to a socially cognizant not-yet-adult, a rebellious era where one dreams of establishing a sense of self after taking a bite of the ever-delicious apple of independence. Wisdom is a double-edged sword—comprehension comes at a price, and something is always lost when knowledge is gleaned. Children learning to cope with the world drives the pathos behind his naïve figurative paintings. Adults are acclimatized to perceiving the world as rational, while children see the world through the lens of wonder. Just as a child learns to make sense of the universe around them, Dodi frequently questions the universally accepted laws of order. Why must objects be of a certain colour? Why should we follow ratios and proportions? Thus, in Dodi’s art, each stroke is a careful calibration of defiance, a desperate attempt to hold fast to the fleeting of innocence. His works are not just a visual poetry of willfulness, but also a question: if given a chance to begin again, whether one would choose to pay the price of biting the apple.