Born in 1965 in Cilacap, Indonesia, Nasirun is a graduate of the Indonesia Institute of the Arts (ISI), Yogyakarta and is known for creating large-format paintings based on his extensive knowledge of Javanese wayang. Nasirun's gathers elements from the world of wayang and daily life, and selectively incorporating them into a highly personal language wrought upon mythology and the reliance on symbolism. These works are never about visual strategies solely as means to an end, instead, they embrace plurality, hybridity and an unwavering will to truth demonstrated in Nasriun's continued experiments with different pictorial schema and mediums.
Kabotan Sungu (Lot 2172) narrates a moral fable concerning the burden of having excessive offsprings. The protagonist featured is painted larger-than-life on a pictorial surface heavily worked over in Nasirun's highly recognizable expressionistic style. Though the artist draws from specific local experiences, his works should never be taken as a mere symbol of the culturally-specific Indonesian experience, but rather plugged into a more universal thematic and expressive language.