Dian Suci has been awarded the 2025–27 Max Mara Art Prize for Women. She will take part in a six-month traveling residency in Italy to create a project that will be presented in a solo show at Museum MACAN, Jakarta, in summer 2027 and at the Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, in the autumn.
Based in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, Suci works across installation, painting and video. Drawing from her experience as a single mother, her work often addresses issues related to the political domestication of women, authoritarianism, patriarchy and capitalist systems that contribute to the structural oppression of women. She was selected for her project Crafting Spirit: Cultural Dialogues in Heritage and Practice. Her proposal ‘emerges from stories of the body and memory within the lives and gestures of women artisans, whose work often exists between devotion and survival’, according to the artist in a statement.
Suci was selected from a shortlist of five artists that also included Betty Adii, Dzikra Afifah, Ipeh Nur and Mira Rizki. The prize jury was chaired by Cecilia Alemani and composed of Venus Lau, director of Museum MACAN; Amanda Ariawan, Jakarta-based curator; Megan Arlin, gallerist at Sullivan+Strumpf; Melati, Indonesian performance artist; and Evelyn Halim, Jakarta-based collector.
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