Naomi Samara is an artist based in Bali, Indonesia. Born and raised in Bali to a Javanese father and a Dutch-Manadonese mother, her practice is a visual dialogue that questions the relationship between lived experience and the inherited past. By revisiting stories and images from childhood, alongside intersecting ancestral narratives, she paints worlds that are both dreamlike and grounded in personal and collective experience. Through an intuitive and layered process, her subjects move through spaces of solitude and quiet yearning, searching for a sense of home within themselves.

Artist Statement

I paint and draw to understand what the body remembers before the mind can name it.

 

Making is a way of untying sensations that settle beneath language. It is a way of witnessing, and being witnessed by, stories carried through generations like still water. Stories that live in our bodies long before we know they are there. They are rarely spoken aloud. Instead,they surface in subtle gestures, instincts, fears, and longings that feel both deeply personal and strangely familiar.

 

The act of painting allows me to slow these moments down. To hold something fleeting long enough to look at it. To give weight to what is often overlooked or impossible to articulate.

 

I paint to liberate an unknown rage.

 

I paint to bridge a disconnect.

 

Through image-making, I search for a place where inherited memory and lived experience can exist together. Where contradiction, tenderness, grief, and belonging are allowed to share the same space.

Selected Exhibitions and Residencies

2026

• Holy Mary, Group Show, Tripoli Gallery, New York
• Repetisi Memori, Group Show, Ruang Fungsi / Nuanu, Bali
• Echoed Expanse, Group Show, Ruang Fungsi, Bali

2025

• Under the Ray of Purnama, Group Show, Biasa ArtSpace, Bali

2024

• Group Exhibition, Sun Contemporary, Bali
• Ubud Open Studio (Artist Participation), hosted by Masa-Masa, Bali

2023

• Present Space, Duo Exhibition with Salvita Decorte, Titik Dua, Bali
• Artist Residency, Rumah Hujan, Bali
• Art Jakarta Gardens, Ruci Gallery, Jakarta

2022

• Angkasa by Sukkhacitta (Live Painting), John Hardy, Bali
• Ropana, Group Exhibition curated by Cakravala, Museum Pasifika, Bali
• Into the Light / Into the Dark, Group Exhibition, Let’s Pretend Gallery, Melbourne, Australia
• Svastia, Group Exhibition curated by Cakravala, Titik Dua, Bali

2021

• Publik, Indonesian Contemporary Art and Design (ICAD), Kemang, Jakarta
• My Love Is Your Love, Every Woman Biennial, Copeland Gallery, Peckham, London
• In Between, Group Exhibition, Cakravala Virtual Space
• Untitled, Group Exhibition, Ruci Gallery, Jakarta

2020

• In Her Body, Solo Exhibition, Cakravala Virtual Space

2019

• Pentimento; A Speculative Trace, Dia.Lo.Gue Artspace, Jakarta