Image: Asian Art Museum of San Francisco
FX Harsono’s ‘Writing in the Rain’ will close on September 7 at the Asian Art Museum’s Osher Foundation Gallery in San Francisco, concluding a presentation of the Indonesian artist’s six-minute video installation about memory, identity and the recovery of an erased name. The exhibition, organized by the Asian Art Museum, has been on view from June 26.
At the center of the installation, Harsono paints his Chinese birth name on a pane of glass as rain gradually washes it away. The museum describes the gesture as a reclamation of identity, transforming a history of cultural persecution into what it calls a poetic act of recovery.
The work is rooted in Indonesia’s Suharto era, which lasted from 1967 to 1998. During that period, Chinese language instruction was banned, a historical context represented in the installation by three children’s desks that evoke classrooms affected by the policy. The video follows Harsono’s effort to relearn and reclaim his language as an adult.
The museum presents the piece as more than a historical record. Its imagery addresses the personal and collective trauma of cultural erasure while connecting the artist’s experience to the continuing use of language and appearance as markers of discrimination. The installation combines color digital video and sound with wood elements, including the desks.
Harsono, born in 1949, is identified by the museum as one of Indonesia’s most important contemporary artists. ‘Writing in the Rain’ was made in 2011 and entered the Asian Art Museum’s collection through a 2019 museum purchase supported by the Mortimer-Harvey Fund. The museum’s 2026 installation view was photographed by David Armstrong.
The exhibition is located at the Asian Art Museum, Chong-Moon Lee Center for Asian Art and Culture, 200 Larkin Street, San Francisco. The museum is open Thursdays from 1 to 8 p.m. and Fridays through Mondays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; it is closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays. ‘FX Harsono: Writing in the Rain’ remains on view through September 7.
