Naufal Abshar is a promising young Indonesian artist, born in 1993 in Bandung. Trained at Lasalle College of the Arts and Goldsmith University of London, Naufal has participated in various group exhibitions in places as diverse as Singapore, Jogja, Venice and Lithuania. In 2013, he won the first prize in the Indonesia Arts Festival live painting competition. With his “HAHA” series, Naufal explores the roots and boundaries of humour and laughter.

As an artist, Naufal is a student perhaps unconscious of the philosopher Henri Bergson who researched the meaning of laughter and observed its social function. “My work explores the amalgamation of the concepts of laughter and humour, which are universal to human culture. HAHA represents laughter in various activities, which are: laughing because we won something, laughing because we mock someone, laughing induced by craziness or it can be a rejection of fears. So in my work, I try to twist the role of laughter or humour into an activity of repetition that constructs social criticism. The prolongation of form on political humour can be found in most of my works, the use of satiric laughter illustrates how I use laughter as an activity that can imply criticism.”