By K. Nawasanga

The eyes are often called the windows of the soul. Suanjaya Kencut replaces them with buttons.

It is a simple visual device, but one that has become central to the Badung-born artist’s universe of knitted-doll figures. Their button eyes, blank faces and deceptively innocent appearance suggest a world in which identity is fractured, emotions are concealed and human connection is never quite as straightforward as it seems. At the same time, the absence of expression turns each figure into a kind of empty mirror, leaving viewers to supply the feelings the characters themselves refuse to reveal.

These figures take centre stage in Where Do We Belong?, Kencut’s solo exhibition at Mucciaccia Gallery in Rome, Italy. Open from September 24 to November 9, 2026, the exhibition brings together 27 recent works: 15 acrylic paintings on canvas and 12 fiberglass sculptures.

For Kencut, the knitted figure is less a fixed character than a flexible vessel. He places these apparently naive creatures in intimate everyday situations as well as expansive landscapes, allowing domestic scenes, social tensions and existential questions to coexist. The blankness of their faces is crucial. Rather than telling viewers what to feel, the figures leave the emotional work to them.

This is particularly effective because Kencut’s visual language initially appears almost too cheerful to carry such weight. His paintings are built around vivid, polychromatic compositions and bold single-colour backgrounds. The effect recalls the visual of pop art and, at first glance, the uncomplicated pleasures of childhood.

But the cheerfulness is deceptive.

One of the exhibition’s key works, Under the Sky of Kuta Beach, considers family not simply as a physical place but as an emotional shelter—a space where affection, memory and a sense of belonging take root. The question posed by the exhibition’s title therefore extends beyond geography. Where do we belong when the familiar structures around us have been disrupted? What remains of home when place, memory and identity become unstable?

Some of Kencut’s landscapes suggest a world after destruction: a landscape in which life is beginning again, nature is being cared for and relationships between people and their surroundings are slowly being rebuilt. The juxtaposition of two-dimensional paintings and three-dimensional sculptures reinforces this sense of reconstruction, creating a spatial conversation between objects, images and the viewer.

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