Heri Dono was born in Jakarta, on June 12, 1960. He was the first Indonesian artist to break into the global art scene during the early 1990s. Starting his career in the 80s, Heri Dono is well-known for contemporary installation works, many of which were inspired by the Javanese shadow puppets (wayang). He tried to comprise a number of complex elements from wayang performances: visual arts, music, storytelling, social criticism, humor, and myths of life philosophy. These components are merged into the performance's narrative to give a generic interpretation to which multimedia elements are added. The traditional art performance inspires Heri Dono's interest in revitalizing the arts that are deeply rooted in Indonesian traditions. In many of his three-dimensional installation artworks and performances, Heri Dono effectively makes use of 'performativity' so that the works are involved in complimentary dialogs with their audience. In his paintings, Heri Dono makes the most use of wild deformations and freestyle fantasies out of which emerge characters from the wayang stories. To this, he adds his profound knowledge and interest in children's cartoons, animated films, and comics.

His name was recorded in Artlink, an established art magazine in Australia, stating that from 1993-2006, Heri Dono was the most internationally-invited artist. He was also recorded as 1 of 100 prominent Avant-Garde artists in the world. He has participated in more than 300 exhibitions and 35 international biennales including Asia Pacific Triennial (1993 and 2000), Gwangju Biennale (1995 and 2006), Sydney Biennale (1996), Shanghai Biennale (2000), Venice Biennale (2003 and 2015), Sharjah Biennial (2005 and 2023), Guangzhou Triennale (2011), Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2018), Bangkok Art Biennale (2018), and Gangwon Kids Triennale (2020) in South Korea. He also earned a number of awards, including Dutch Prince Claus Award for Culture and Development from the Kingdom of the Netherlands (1998), UNESCO Prize (2000), and Anugerah Adhikarya Rupa from the Indonesian Government (2014).