Nana Tedja is among the most distinctive abstract expressionist painters working in Indonesia today, recognised as one of the country's leading female voices within a contemporary art scene that has historically privileged male practitioners. Born in 1971 in Yogyakarta into a noble Javanese family in which strict codes governed the visibility of women, her trajectory toward a life in painting was both an aesthetic choice and an act of personal emancipation. She completed her formal training at the Postgraduate Program of the Indonesian Institute of Art (ISI) Yogyakarta, Fine Art Department, the institution at the heart of contemporary Indonesian painting, and has lived and worked in Yogyakarta as a full-time artist ever since.

Her artistic sensibility was shaped by an exceptional domestic atelier. Her father owned a batik company and her mother designed for it, and from childhood she observed hundreds of artisans at work, becoming fluent in handmade batik painting on small fabric panels using the canting. Visitors from Europe, Japan, Taiwan, Australia and the United States acquired her early works directly from the company's display rooms, providing her with an early international audience. The presence of her grandfather, who painted in oils within the Yogyakarta Palace, further deepened her formation, situating her practice within a lineage that crosses craft, court tradition, and contemporary fine art.

Her mature work is defined by a powerful materiality and chromatic confidence. She constructs her paintings by stacking paint in multiple layers using a palette knife, frequently building up to eight layers per work, producing thick textures and intense chromatic depth. She works in deliberate disregard of Nirmana, the academic rule of colour harmony she encountered during her ISI training, in favour of an intuitive, expressive vocabulary that has become her signature. Conceptually, her practice is a sustained meditation on freedom, womanhood, and selfhood, with bodies of work responding to themes ranging from personal autonomy to collective experience, including her acclaimed Through Pandemic series.

Nana Tedja's work has been presented through a sustained programme of solo and group exhibitions across Indonesia and internationally. She held early solo presentations at Jogja National Museum (IDOL, 2008) and Bentara Budaya Yogyakarta (Bebas Merdeka, 1999), with more recent solo exhibitions at Art 1 New Museum Jakarta (Tumbuh Akar, 2018), Gallery 1819 Singapore (2022), and Sun Rise Gallery at the Fairmont Hotel Jakarta (2022). Her group presentations include the Jakarta Art Biennale and Art Jakarta, represented by Art 1 New Museum, and a charity auction at National Gallery Singapore via Artsy in 2022. She was a finalist in the Winsor & Newton Worldwide Millennium Painting Competition (1999), and her work is held in private and corporate collections across Asia, Europe, and the United States.

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