An Australian executed in Indonesia on drugs charges was Saturday remembered as an artist whose paintings were powerful images created in the face of the death penalty.
Myuran Sukumaran was shot dead by firing squad late last month after his pleas for clemency over his role in a syndicate smuggling heroin from the Indonesian island of Bali were rejected.
Ben Quilty, an acclaimed Australian artist who became a friend and mentor to Sukumaran through visiting him in jail, said the 34-year-old did not want to die but had done so with dignity.
“He used his visual language to tell the world who Myuran Sukumaran really was and right until the end he communicated with the world from an isolation cell with a firing squad preparing to put bullets through his chest,” Quilty said.
“Under unimaginable circumstances Myuran was making the most potent and powerful anti-death penalty images the world has seen in a long, long time.
“Myu did want to live. He had many paintings to make.”
Sukumaran and fellow Australian Andrew Chan, considered the ringleaders of the so-called Bali Nine drug smuggling group, spent a decade in prison before their execution on April 29.
A funeral for Chan, 31, was held in Sydney on Friday.
Story by AFP
