Citra Sasmita: Who Stole the Sky
Exhibition
12 March – 16 August 2026
Citra Sasmita, Temple of Amygdala (2025). Photo: Helle Navratil
Welcome to a guided tour of Citra Sasmita's exhibition Who Stole the Sky, where curator Heather Jones provides an in-depth look at key concepts in the exhibition. The audience will gain a special insight into the themes behind the works, the artist's process, and the installation of the artworks in the galleries. After the tour, everyone is welcome to sit in our foyer and enjoy our pop-up café.
In this exhibition, Sasmita presents painting, textile works and sculpture. She confronts the postcolonial legacy of Bali, re-authoring her own history and artistic tradition from a matriarchal perspective. Visitors are invited into a multisensory experience, where nature and mythology take centre stage as an integral part of who we are as humans.
The audience is invited to enter into a dialogue with both the works and the curator with a pop-up café of delicious treats from Molinå and coffee from Micro Kaffi.
The tour will last approximately 40 min. With additional time for questions and discussion.
Please note, this tour will be conducted in English and is included in the price of admission.
The tour, along with admission, is free for all Kunsthall Stavanger Members.
Welcome!
Curator and guide: Heather Jones
Citra Sasmita
Citra Sasmita (b. 1990, Bali, Indonesia) is a self-taught artist. She studied literature and physics, and worked as a short story illustrator for the Bali Post before she began developing her artistic practice.
Sasmita focuses on unravelling the myths and misconceptions of Balinese art and culture, whilst shedding light on the Dutch colonial history which had shaped notions of authenticity in Bali. She is also deeply invested in questioning a woman’s place in social hierarchy and seeks to upend normative constructs of gender by reimagining mythical and classical narratives of war and romance to exalt female resistance instead.
Sasmita employs the Kamasan painting technique, which originates from a small village in Klungkung, East Bali since the 15th century and is traditionally exclusively practised by men to narrate Hindu epics. She engages with it as a reclamation of female agency, reimagining narratives drawn from ancient Balinese literature, rituals, mythologies and iconography. In recent years, she has expanded her practice to include sculpture and installation, incorporating various materials such as braided hairs, antique wooden pillars and ancient textiles to create her universe of empowered and divine cosmology.
Her work has been shown in several notable biennales and triennales such as ALOHA NŌ, Hawai’i Triennial (Hawai’i, 2025), to carry, Sharjah Biennial (United Arab Emirates, 2025); Precarious Joys, Toronto Biennial of Art (Canada, 2024); After Rain, Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale (Saudi Arabia, 2024); Ten Thousand Suns, 24th Biennale of Sydney (Australia, 2024); Choreographies of the Impossible, 35th São Paulo Biennale (Brazil, 2023); The Open World, 3rd Thailand Biennale, Mae Fah Luang Art and Cultural Park, Chiang Rai (Thailand, 2023); Garden of Ten Seasons, Savvy Contemporary, Berlin (Germany, 2022); Kathmandu Triennale (Nepal, 2021-2022); ARTJOG MMXXII, Time To Wonder, Jogja National Museum, Yogyakarta (Indonesia, 2021); and the Biennale Yogyakarta (Indonesia, 2019). Recent solo exhibitions include Into Eternal Land, Barbican The Curve, (London, 2025); Atlas of Curiosity, Yeo Workshop (Singapore, 2023); Ode To The Sun, Yeo Workshop (Singapore, 2020); and Tales of Nowhere, Museum MACAN, Jakarta (Indonesia, 2020).
Heather Jones
Heather Jones is an American curator, writer, and editor based between Norway and Sweden. She has worked with Kunsthall Stavanger in two periods, from 2013–2018 and again from 2023 to the present. During her time at the Kunsthall, she has curated and organized projects including Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings: Bleak House (2023–24), Jumana Manna: Break, Take, Erase, Tally (2024), and Mark Corfield-Moore: We Speak Chicken (2024–25). She also curated the first institutional solo exhibition by Judith Bernstein (2016), along with solo exhibitions by Sascha Braunig (2016) and Jessica Warboys (2016), among many others.
Her editorial projects for Kunsthall Stavanger include the monograph Judith Bernstein: Rising (Mousse) and a forthcoming publication with artist Anette Gellein (2026).
Beyond her work at Kunsthall Stavanger, Jones is the Founding Editor of CAS – Contemporary Art Stavanger, an online arts journal and residency program, and serves on the board of Galleri Entrée, Bergen. She writes and edits regularly for publications and journals in the fields of art, craft, and visual culture. She was previously Curator of Art at Sigtuna Museum & Art, Sweden, and Exhibitions Coordinator at Independent Curators International, New York. Early in her career, Jones worked as Master Apprentice in the studio of Sol LeWitt and as Studio Manager for the artist Caledonia Curry (Swoon), experiences that gave her a strong foundation in studio practice and production, and a lasting commitment to supporting artistic practice and discourse.