Ari Bayuaji was born in Indonesia in 1975. He graduated as a civil engineer and worked in Indonesia before deciding to move to Canada permanently in 2005. Once in Montreal, he studied Fine Arts at Concordia University from 2005 to 2010 and now divides his time between Montreal and Bali. The artist is known mainly for his art installations that incorporate the use of found and ready-made objects he collects from various parts of the world, thereby exposing himself to the different cultural traditions.
Ari Bayuaji is expert in conveying aspects of daily life within a culture as his works often expose the overlooked artistic value in everyday life expressed through objects and places and their roles within a society. The found or ready-made objects that compose his creative material might be "old", but he injects his work with emotion influenced by the contemporary issues he seeks to address to create the "content" as his artworks to create something "new".
Ari Bayuaji has been traveling extensively internationally to participate in numerous artist-in-residency programs while also participating in international group shows in Korea, Taiwan, Denmark, Indonesia, Germany and The United States. His works are part of the permanent collection of Musée des Beaux Arts de Montréal and the Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec and have been exhibited in major solo exhibitions in Singapore, Taipei (Taiwan), Ste-Alvère (France), Dusseldorf (Germany), Rotterdam,(Netherlands), Toronto (Canada) Sydney (Australia), Bangkok (Thailand), Washington DC (USA), and Jogjakarta (Indonesia). Ari just recently created installations of his work from his Weaving the Ocean project at the 2023 Cheongju Craft Biennale and the 2023 Busan Sea Art Festival in South Korea. His solo installation, Weaving the Ocean: In Ari Bayuaji's Studio opened November 25th 2023 at Espace Pour la Vie at the Biosphère in Montreal and will run until September 8th, 2024.