Wulang Sunu and the Small Notes Behind His Work
There was a moment when Wulang was preparing a poster for Rich Brian’s tour. The deadline was tight, he was taking care of his newborn child, and ideas had to come quickly. His first meeting with Brian’s team left only a small space to work with. They showed him the creative direction, pointed out which of his works they liked, and left the rest to the process. He listened to the album Where Is My Head?, gathered fragments of lyrics, scenes from video clips, and words that stayed in his mind. From all of this, he found a sense of fragmented space. “I added a small idea about the search for identity from the story of Dewa Ruci and Bima,” he said. Two personas of Brian appear in the composition, moving through interconnected spaces like fragments of experience that form a person.
That moment shows how Wulang works. He reads situations, takes notes, composes visuals, and leaves room for intuition. He calls his process “nothing special,” yet everything that brought him to that point grew from long lines of experience, references, and the habit of noting down small things.
What we see in his works today was shaped long before that poster was made. His childhood was not unusual. He grew up with comics, animated films, and video games, and like many children, drawing was a fun activity. What set things apart was a decision he made in high school. At that time, the trend of making stickers and T-shirts was popular, a medium of expression and a way to earn pocket money. At the same time, he grew tired of conventional comics. Around 2007, translated graphic novels began to appear in bookstores. Titles like Persepolis, Chicken with Plums, A Contract with God, and Three Shadows opened a new reading experience. “They were refreshing and had different plots,” he said. Those encounters strengthened his desire to draw.
His references came from many mediums. All of them shaped his visual sensitivity before eventually forming into something recognizable. Figures and ornaments appear from many places, “from whatever I see, hear, and watch,” he said. Theatre, books, music, and even fragments of songs can spark ideas. His love for graphic novels made him gravitate toward unpolished, trembling, organic lines. “Lines like that feel alive to me, and for some people they became a way to identify my work,” he said. Over time, people began to recognize his work through those lines.
Alongside illustration, Wulang has been active in various visual projects. Starting from a high school friendship, Studio Batu was formed. Originating from a shared interest in graffiti and mural making, the studio grew into a space for cross-medium experimentation. Since 2013, they have worked on short films, animation, visual performances, and collaborative projects involving many people.
Working as a collective brings its own challenges. “There are many ups and downs because working as a collective means working with many heads,” he said. They learned to manage ego, fill in for one another, and understand what the collective is to each of them. For Wulang, a collective is a space to step outside personal ego. In that space, he learned to distribute portions, gauge intensity, and trust collaborators. Although different from working individually, he said that the spirit of playfulness at Studio Batu remains the same. Through the studio, he has been involved in projects such as video mapping with Miles Film at ArtJog and their largest work so far, a projection project for the Light to Night Festival created with Budi Agung Kuswara.
Collective projects did not come only from Studio Batu. From 2011 to 2016 he was involved with Papermoon Puppet Theatre. For him, working with Papermoon provided an extraordinary experience. One of them was when they performed at a festival in England that he described as “crazy.” Besides performing, he had the chance to watch many kinds of shows he had never imagined before. That experience continues to stay with him.
Outside the collective, his individual journey grew alongside it. One of the most important markers in his career was creating book covers. Through this work, he learned to build stories from each project. He exchanged thoughts with many people, read texts related to the theme, noted scenes or phrases that emerged suddenly, and gathered thumbnails in his notebook. From those findings, he composed visuals that felt aligned with the manuscript. This long process was later summarized in his solo exhibition at Uma Seminyak, Bali, titled “di balik laman: tergores dan kubiarkan terbuka,” which ran until early 2025. The exhibition became a place to present characters or scenes that did not appear on book covers but still felt meaningful to him. “I released those residues,” he said. The exhibition also served as a space to recall what he learned from working on book covers.
He draws from what he sees, reads, and feels. From what exists around him and what he finds there. In 2016, he came across the Rampogan Macan ceremony by accident. After reading other sources, he found many visual and narrative potentials, both explicit and implicit. His interest in myths, history, and animals shaped much of his recent visual work. “Maybe I see my work as an effort to understand what is around me while asking questions that might resonate with others,” he said.
The year 2025 has been a busy one for him. Recently he worked on another challenging project for the Jogja-NETPAC Asian Film Festival. He collaborated with Muklay to create the festival’s poster. This year marked the 20th anniversary of JAFF, and the key visual was created by two artists at once. The process was challenging because they had to imagine how both works could fit together without overshadowing one another.
Moments like these show how Wulang navigates his creative space. He can work on book covers, collaborate with other artists, develop collective projects, and create visuals for international musicians. Yet everything returns to the same method: observing and building lines from the small notes he keeps in his book. Although his visual execution appears complex, his way of working emerges from a simple process, and that simplicity does not appear suddenly. It comes from years of experience and discipline, and he holds onto it to keep his work honest to what he sees and feels.
