Noviadi Angkasapura has been drawing and sculpting since childhood. At the age of twenty-two, he experienced an apparition: a spirit commanded him to create according to the principles of “patience” and “peace.” Recalling the event, he explains: “It was like a dream, but I was not asleep. When I came to my senses, I tried to follow the spirit, but it had disappeared.” From that moment on, his urge to create intensified. He even envisions founding his own institution, the Angkasapura Art Museum – Raden Sastro Inggil, which he imagines housing one million drawings.
For Angkasapura, drawing is both prayer and meditation, but also a means of transmitting messages from spirits of whom he claims to be the intermediary—though he does not seek to interpret or explain them. His works depict strange, sometimes monstrous figures with exposed internal organs. Nourished by the imagery of his native country, his art reflects a deep desire to grasp the superior forces that shape human existence. Drawing from Islamic traditions as well as Indonesian iconography—particularly puppet theater—he lives and works in Jakarta.