A British artist of Balinese descent, Sinta Tantra was born in New York in 1979. She studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London 1999–2003 and at the Royal Academy Schools London 2004–06.
Highly regarded for her site-specific murals and installations in the public realm, commissions include; Lee Tung Avenue, Hong Kong (2018); Facebook London (2018);Folkestone Triennial (2017) Newnham College, Cambridge University (2016); Songdo South Korea (2015); Royal British Society of Sculptors (2013); Liverpool Biennial (2012); Southbank Centre (2007). Tantra’s most notable public work includes a 300-metre long painted bridge commissioned for the 2012 Olympics, Canary Wharf, London.
Known for her fascination with colour and composition, Sinta Tantra’s work is an experiment in scale and dimension, a hybridity of pop and formalism, an exploration of identity and aesthetics. Her decade of work in the public realm produced distinct colour abstractions which wrapped around the built environment, enlivening and transforming them in the process. Her work now ranges from small painted canvases to huge architectural installations, from bold, tropical colour to a calder-like minimalism. It occupies a space at the intersection between painting and architecture, striking a fine balance between the two-dimensional and three-dimensional, decorative and functional, public and private. Themes within Tantra’s practice include the slippage between pictorial and physical space, of turning something 'inside out', and how we as bodies become submerged in surface and structure.
"I describe the work as ‘painting on an architectural scale'. She creates works that celebrate the spectacle, questioning the decorative, functional and social role of art. The compositional arrangements are rooted in formalism. She becomes intrigued when this formalism becomes 'relational' - when private becomes public and when the viewer becomes active. Her work is an 'overlay' which inserts its identity within the pre existing - heightening a sense of fantasy within the functional.
