PARIS.- In Paris since September, at the Villa Raffet as part of a residency programme by SAM Art Projects, Eko Nugroho is an Indonesian artist born in Yogyakarta in 1977. Following the exhibition by Inci Eviner organised by SAM Art Projects in 2011, the Musée dʼArt moderne de la Ville de Paris integrates the exhibition « Témoin hybride » (Hybrid Witness ) by Eko Nugroho into its permanent collections. The artist has taken possession of the space by covering the floor, walls and ceiling with mural paintings. He also presents around twenty canvases made during his time in Paris, hybrid characters somewhere between monsters and teenagers, bringing an unsettling and ironic point of view. These canvases alternate with imposing embroideries, a traditional technique hijacked by the artist, sculptures and characters seemingly from science-fiction and an animated film which is both playful and unsettling.

Eko Nugroho criss-crosses Paris like he does in Yogyakarta, the cultural capital of the island of Java where he lives. He captures the noise and the frenzy of the street, the eye-contact, identity, attitudes. He tranlates this flow in his drawings and patterns which invade the space. All the means of creation are used to translate these meetings between Indonesia and the West, street culture and the art world, political stakes and intimate reflections.

Although he was trained at the Indonesian Art Institute and presented in galleries and museums, Nugrohoʼs work is deeply anchored in the urban environment. For ten years he has edited the comic book review Daging Tumbuh open to artists of all persuasions, he directs a clothes business which he customises and has made from the cast-offs of his area, in an Indonesia struggling to find economic stability. dirige une entreprise de vêtements quʼil customise et fait réaliser par les laisséspour compte de son quartier,Eko works in situ, collaborating with local communities, occupying all the surfaces which he is given, from the façade of the Sucrière during the Biennale de Lyon in 2009, to the Espace Louis Vuitton last summer.