BIO
In the age of migration and multicultural families, no one has to be one thing - Winnie straddles three countries of Indonesia, China, and the U.S where she worked as educator as well as artist. In her mixed-media works, tropical and botanical motifs are not relegated as an exotic backdrop but intermingle with human bodies. Some motifs are more pronounced, like figures sitting in the position of or making hand gestures of Buddha. But Winnie's playful collage uses these pieces to resist the sense of a fixed origin, fully giving in celebrating rather than resisting the confusions of having multitudinous identities.
Winnie Sidharta is a painter based in Queens, New York. Born and raised in East Java, Indonesia. Winnie has exhibited in galleries and museums in Indonesia, Beijing, California, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio and New York City. She studied Visual Communication Design in Indonesia and Oil Painting in Beijing, China. Winnie lives and works in China as an artist and art educator for 6 years before moving to the US. During her time as an artist in Beijing, she learned and absorbed the booming of global contemporary art scene in China. In 2010, she receivedher MFA in Painting and Drawing from The Ohio State University and later taught there before settling in New York City in 2014. In addition of exhibiting work, she also taught in art museums and public schools in New York City in the last 5 years.In Indonesia, she exhibited a series of works based on her family immigration history and was featured in several newspaper reviews in 2002. Her work at the time was born a few years after national political turmoil and global economic crash that resulted in race riot and regime change in 2018. Winnie’s investigations of her personal approach to the subject of identity and collective cultural experience such as immigrations and assimilations is ever present in her current works. Her painting was chosen as a large scale mural in the city of Columbus as part of the Ohio city-wide public art initiative. Winnie re-visited the mural format in her most recent exhibition- a site-specific installation at Ortega Y Gasset Projects in Brooklyn, New York. Her works were also featured in publications in California and Columbus through critic reviews and catalogues. Her recent work and artist interview was featured in the issue 10 of Maake Magazine this past January.
