Jompet Kuswidananto was a self-trained musician during the reign of the New Order dictatorship. Kuswidananto turned to the visual arts and went on to work within the local Yogyakarta art community. In 1998 and continuing to the present day, he has worked with Teater Garasi, a multidisciplinary collective of artists. Kuswidananto works across a diverse range of mediums including installation, video, sound, performance and theater. His practice focuses on issues of unfinished businesses in the context of Indonesian history spanning from colonial wounds to the trauma of dictatorship. He investigates this theme through working on the symptoms of casual anxiety, daily taboos and regular mystification. He works mostly with found and readymade objects that bear both personal and collective narratives then constructs them as verses of poem inviting the public to enter the complexity of a story.