Indonesia

SEA Dance Collective

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SEA Dance Collective

Trần Minh Hải (b.1993) is a contemporary dance artist and choreographer based in Hanoi, Vietnam.
Ny&Khun: Sreynoch Khun (b.1996) and Ny Lai (b.1997) are a contemporary duo based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
Muhamad Erdifadilah (b.1997) is a musician from Bangka Island, Indonesia.
Pebri Irawan (b.1997) a dancer-choreographer of the Indonesian Institute of the Arts in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
Briefly accompanied by Chan Kar Kah, artist and educator of Marrow Collective and Suiyi Dance Company, Malaysia.

We are Southeast Asian artists who met at Southeast Asian Choreolab 2024 in George Town, Penang. During the program, we formed a strong connection not just through training, but through deep conversations about our work, ideas, and what matters to us. We shared how we create, what inspires us, and our thoughts about art, culture, and the world. Even though we come from 3 different countries, we found many similarities in our culture, how we think and work. This connection is still new, yet we want to keep exploring it. We hope to create something special together. We believe in strong visuals and the idea of “less is more.”

On Sunday 24 July, together with invited members of local dance community, we will perform a short outdoor ritual in the garden at Rimbun Dahan. What you’re about to witness is a living painting. Over the past two months, we’ve been living, listening, moving, and creating at Rimbun Dahan. In the stillness surrounded by nature and time, we found something we now want to share with you, not to impress but to express. This is a spiritual offering and meditation in motion. We’re not here to show off yet we’re here to show up. With every step, every pause, every breath, we’re painting. Painting with the colors of silence, of calm, of curiosity. This is a time for simply being.

Banny Jayanata

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Banny Jayanata

Indonesian visual artist Banny Jayanata spent a month in residence at Rimbun Dahan in April 2025, culminating with a solo show “The Garden Bites Back” at The Back Room gallery in Kuala Lumpur in May 2025.

About the Artist

Banny Jayanata (b. 1983, Surabaya, Indonesia; lives and works in Sidoarjo, Indonesia) received his Bachelor’s Degree in Visual Communication and Design from the Petra Christian University, Surabaya, Indonesia, in 2007 and his Master’s Degree in Visual Arts from the Indonesian Institute of the Arts, Yogyakarta, in 2014.

Jayanata’s paintings explore the existential human condition, enclosing distorted characters in a melancholic tableau of impasto brushstrokes. This interest in the weight of life’s transience is translated primarily through movement in what he describes as a “living image”; his subjects are often caught in moments of profound inner turmoil or meet in violent collisions with other bodies. Jayanata’s overarching interest in the interplay between beauty and decay simultaneously infuses his painting with a sense of inevitable decay, where beauty is juxtaposed with the harsh reality of its fragility. In this decay, Jayanata finds deeper meaning, reaching for beauty as a kind of redemption and purpose in the face of life’s inevitable transience. In his paintings, Jayanata captures the essence of what it means to be human—fragile, beautiful, and inexorably bound to the passage of time.

Jayanata has participated in a number of exhibitions throughout his artistic career. His solo exhibitions are Black and Blue Mood at Museum dan Tanah Liat, Yogyakarta, Indonesia (2018) and LUKA at Independent Art Management, Yogyakarta, Indonesia (2014). Selected group exhibitions include Onsen Confidential: The Final at Mujin-to Production, Tokyo, Japan (2024), Basel Social Club in Basel, Switzerland (2023); murmur at ROH, Jakarta, Indonesia (2023); Identitas yang Hidup at Museum dan Tanah Liat, Yogyakarta, Indonesia (2021); Merayakan Optimisme, Taman Budaya Yogyakarta, Yogyakarta, Indonesia (2019); Virtual Territories at Jogja National Museum, Yogyakarta, Indonesia (2013); Works on Paper #2 at Aswara Heritage Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (2013); and DEKA – EXI(S) at Biennale Jogja at Yogyakarta, Indonesia (2013).

About the Residency

Issues of anthropocene with its contradictions is my main concern, reminding me the importance of coexistence living between nature and human.  Being aware of the complexity of environmental issues, the artist’s works may only give suggestions. I too am not giving any solutions on the issue. 

During my residency in Rimbun Dahan I’d rather feel gratitude towards the opportunity I have to explore such a beautiful and natural place, yet which has so many challenging moments, like thunderstorms. Also there are moments of nice warming sunrises or beautiful sunsets near the pond, and birdsong in the mornings. I follow the rhythms of living which is very similar with nature’s dynamics.

The experience of living both in a natural environment and an urban city like Kuala Lumpur gave me rich nuances and inspiration to make some works. For example, a work titled ‘branches and concrete’, the last work I made in this residency, is an attempt to depict the antagonistic impression in the relationship between urban and natural life. 

About the Exhibition

From 16 May to 1 June 2025, the works Banny Jayanata made at Rimbun Dahan are on display in a solo exhibition at The Back Room, Zhongshan Building, Kuala Lumpur. Go to The Back Room website for more information about the exhibition, and to read the exhibition essay by Ong Kar Jin.

Nuril Basri

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Nuril Basri

Nuril Basri, an author from Indonesia, had a two-month residency at Rimbun Dahan in April-May 2025.

About the Author

Nuril Basri is an Indonesian writer whose work blends tragicomedy, autofiction, bildungsroman, and offbeat storytelling. His novels have been translated into English, Malay, and French. In 2023, his novel Le Rat d’égout won the Grand Prix du Roman Gay Traduit in France. He has been supported by institutions such as the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, the National Centre for Writing in Norwich, the Literarisches Colloquium Berlin, and others. He is currently working on his 10th novel.

www.nurilbasri.com
Instagram.com/nurilbasri

About the Residency

Swimming, and Naked Behind My Words

During my time at Rimbun Dahan, I’ve come to see swimming as a way to free my mind, letting my thoughts move and settle like water itself.

Swimming also a ritual that mirrors my writing process, where I strip away layers of comfort (my clothes, my façade, my tolerance) to uncover something more vulnerable, more fully myself. Almost naked, without shame.

This project is my way of peeling off what I usually hide behind, much like how swimming strips me down to just my body, just myself. The way swimming allows me to be fully in my body, this novel allows me to be fully in my voice.

My novel-in-progress is an exploration of identity, power dynamics, pain, queerness, and the working class. It is a sequel to my novel Le Rat d’égout (2023).

At the open studio, I will be reading one of the chapters I wrote during my residency at Rimbun Dahan, followed by a discussion about everything else. An intimate little gathering.

Ella Wijt

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Ella Wijt

Born in Jakarta in 1990, Ella Wijt’s interest in art began at a young age through drawing and painting. She graduated from the School of The Art Institute of Chicago majoring in Contemporary Studies and Painting. Ella enjoys cleaning her home, exploring the garden and working alone in her studio, walking with her thoughts in rather quiet surroundings, in which everything seems normal, nothing stands out, although the space is physically crowded. Ella enjoys a space that reveals itself over time as she is living with it, not seeking attention but longing for intimacy which requires all senses. Her work mainly explores topics on mythology and womanhood expressed through painting, sculpture, installation and photography.

Ella has been working on an installation project called BUMIDUNIA, a series of research and work that she began in 2012. BUMIDUNIA is the mothership of all her works, where she sees it as a collaborative work between her current environment and herself. It is play, it is a question that leads to another question, it is a challenge, and it is mythology. It articulates history and language through its artifacts, which include drawings, modified objects, found materials and images which become her studies about the world in which she lives. It meanders through re-imaginings of objects that may seem familiar to humans but delve into the uncanny. Familiarity shifts and distorts through material transformations, accessing broader psychological recollections in humans. BUMIDUNIA is also the foundation of her childhood dream – a library and home for collected objects where people could imagine, explore and discover the new. This dream would become Rumah Tangga, an artist-ran space and library in Depok, West Java, where she lives and works now.

At Rimbun Dahan, Ella is looking for new questions while exploring the gardens, learning about plants, biodiversity and their relationship with human beings. Ella hopes to create works that communicate with and honour the land, collaborating with what she finds and learns here. Ella is our resident artist in our Southeast Asian Arts Residency program.

You can find more of her works on her website and Instagram.

Ruth Marbun

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Ruth Marbun

Ruth Marbun (b.1985) is a visual artist based in Jakarta that works much with the depiction of deconstructed figures as a form of her profound interest towards human behavior in connection to the inner self and society as paralleled issue. She embraces details and subtleness from the patterns in life such as imperfection, contradiction, resistance, and honor it as part of growth and process.

Her mini-solo exhibition with Clear Gallery Japan at Art Jakarta in 2018 questioned how family is portrait as sacred value with picture perfect quality in the heritage of her Indonesian root and the contradictory that it causes, creating a void and distance with the natural being of human and relationships that truthfully come with flaws and mistakes.

“One is A Million” is a mixed media installation that she presented at #Perempuan exhibition in Melbourne on December 2018 as part of a group exhibition featuring emerging contemporary artists from Indonesia. The work is an open proposal to add perspective in the construction of value towards women in modern society, to give credits not only to the quantified achievements but also in the daily act and resistance that are more inclusive for women, who are dealing with different circumstances in life.

Ruth has also been exhibiting in Kyoto, Jogjakarta, Osaka, and recently Sydney at Darren Knight Gallery with Indo Artlink and John Cruthers featuring her recent works in textile medium, where she has been extending possibilities from the limitation as a familiar medium off her fashion background to a new approach and narration in the current art practice.

During her residency at Rimbun Dahan, Ruth will be focusing in documenting her experience of working and living closely with nature, something in contrast to her upbringing as a city inhabitant. She will be recording the process through visual journal and also creative writings, which embodies intuitive observation and attentive interaction towards the environment during the one-month period stay, engaging in a reversed rhythm from her regular practice that relies on momentum and practicality. The course of adaptation is often taken for granted for being wired automatically into the operational system as human, despite its importance as an essential survival virtue that advances us from other species. Ruth considers the state of newness and to look elsewhere is a far-reaching of understanding the element of absence inwards, that will create new possibilities off the mundanity as a result from updating to an extensive context.

Ruth will be our Southeast Asian Arts Residency artist for a month in February. You can check out her Instagram here.

 

Lily Yulianti Farid

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Lily Yulianti Farid

Lily Yulianti Farid is a media, communication and gender & development specialist, researcher, trainer and translator with more than 15 years of experience in Indonesia, Japan and Australia.

Lily has worked as a communication specialist, writer, radio journalist, producer, presenter, translator and interpreter. She holds a PhD in Gender Studies from the University of Melbourne through an Australian Leadership Award scholarship. She is the founder/director of Makassar International Writers Festival in Indonesia and the co-founder of Indonesia’s first citizen journalism website. Lily has led media and communications training and capacity-building workshops for Members of Parliament, government officials, Indonesian journalists, and community organisations, and has extensive experience designing media campaigns and engagement strategies for Indonesian women’s organisations.

Lily is a professional translator and interpreter (Indonesian/English). In 2013 she translated Body Shop founder Anita Roddick’s book Business as Unusual from English to Indonesian. Lily also produced monologues/plays for women and the Singing Your Poetry Program for youth in Indonesia.

Since 2011, Lily has been the founder and director of Makassar International Writers Festival, co-founder and executive director of Rumata’ Artspace Indonesia, executive producer of Makassar South East Asian Film Academy, and the producer for INDONATION (2011) Charity Concert in Melbourne in association with Indonesian Students Association, Deakin University.

Lily participated in Ubud Writers and Readers Festival (2008-2013), Singapore Writers Festival (2009), Word Storm Writers Festival Darwin (2010), Byron Bay Writers Festival Australia (2012), Melbourne Writers Festival (2013 and 2017), British Council Edinbrugh Festival (2016), Frankfurt Book Fair (2015), Europhalia Arts Festival (2017), George Town Literary Festival (2014), Indonesian International Book Fair Festival (2017), Winternachten Festival (2009) and Pasar Malam Paris (2008).

Lily will be at Rimbun Dahan for one month under our Southeast Asian Arts Residency program. She is working to document and examine narratives and creative works in Malaysia and to interview Malaysian writers, publishers and literary communities during her residency.

Dessy TAB

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Dessy TAB

Dessy Tri Anandani Bambang or Dessy TAB (b. 1984) is an Indonesian animator born in Brest, France. She  started her carreer as animator by participating in animation challenges during her college days at Bandung Institute of Technology. She has won national awards mostly for her short animations and public social advertisements. In 2014, Dessy received an honorable mention award from ASEAN Animation Festival as a representative participant from Indonesia, for her animation Kopas The Thief. She was also selected as one of three animators for “Animation 3”, an animation masterclass, held collaboratively by Goethe Institut Indonesien, Institut Français Indonesie, and SAE Institut Jakarta. Her animated work, Pulang ke Indonesia, was the result of the masterclass and was completed in July 2016.

I am actually feeling insecure about being away from home but I know I can’t be and I don’t want to stay at home for the rest of my life. So I am planning to make an animation about the insecurity of leaving home, in a place far away from home. I’ve been wanting to make an animation that combines my doll-making skill. Amigurumi is a kind of crocheted doll; aside from being an animator, I am an amigurumi designer and have written a book about them. While I didn’t make any amigurumi for my previous animated works, I’ve made a fabric puppet to use for stop motion animation during my residency in Rimbun Dahan. I still don’t know whether it will work or not, or whether I will go back to paper and ink or digital animation. As I was making the preparation for the project, I realized that making animation in a new place will be very challenging especially from the technical aspect, but when there is a challenge, then there will be a solution. I am looking forward to see what kind of animation I will make in Rimbun Dahan.

To find out more about her, you can check out her website or her Instagram.

https://youtu.be/cYEO4RIXR0k

Carlos Carvalho

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Under the Bell Jar 3, 2015, acrylic felt, cardboard, paper, glass and wood 30cm (diameter) x 40cm

Originally from Brazil, in the last three years Carlos Carvalho has been living in Asia, first India, now in Indonesia. Using crafts techniques and everyday materials, like textiles (mostly felt), paper, cardboard and paint, he builds topographies. Those topographies are found through the combination and juxtaposition of shapes cast from his body. His process is time consuming and repetitive, almost meditative.

My body is the center of my work, my body is queer and I’m gay. Thinking queerness in places where it’s not welcome or allowed is what is going through my mind. Especially because Brazil is also facing a conservative wave right now that is pressing against women, LGBTIs and the African-Brazilian population.

At Rimbun Dahan, being in the middle of all this green I wonder about things that hide in the vegetation, in the bushes. Being mostly by myself, this also brings about the idea that things that we fear hide in the dark, among the plants. I decided to play with the idea of camouflage as a starting point, as we can think of animals that hide. I mock the hunter animal print over the casts taken from my own body – I fear they are part of each of us, that they are constituents of our minds. This is supposed to be a turning point of the dynamics of fear. The body parts originating from the queer-gay body to become the element that hides and hunts, I put the body in a position of power and control, which is what the queer body needs to have in today’s reality.

Find more of Carlos’s work at his website, and his instagram accounts: @carhencarvalho and @carloscarvalhoart

Citra Pratiwi

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Di Balik Horizon / Behind The Horizon, part of Empowering Women artist grant, Concert Hall Taman Budaya Yogyakarta (Yogyakarta Cultural Centre), Padepokan Seni Bagong Kussudiardja- Yogyakarta, Goethe Haus Jakarta (October-December 2013)

Citra Pratiwi (b. 1981 in Pati, Indonesia) works intensely between body, story, movement and  expression — presented in her works in dance and theater. She’s a founder of Migrating Troop Performing Art Network, a hub for artists who want to work in multi and interdisciplinary art to refresh their work and expression. Citra is a graduate of Ethnomusicology from Indonesia Institute of Art Yogyakarta, and was one of the awarded artists for Empowering Women Artists by Kelola Foundation. She is an art-activist, engaging her work to speak about women’s issues, especially women’s issues in Indonesia and she’s also worked as a curator at Padepokan Seni Bagong Kussudiardja, a private cultural centre in Yogyakarta.

During her one month residency at Rimbun Dahan, Citra will be developing her new project named Finding Stillness. It will be a research project exploring body memory, conscious and unconscious body, using Jathilan or Kuda Kepang folk dance as entry material.

I want to research what is stillness in the unconscious and bring this concept into contemporary dance work.

Kelvin Atmadibrata

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Kelvin Atmadibrata

Kelvin Atmadibrata (b.1988, Jakarta, Indonesia) recruits superpowers awakened by puberty and adolescent fantasy to assemble formidable armies of outlaws. Equipped by shōnen characters and macho ero-kawaii, his antiheroes contest the masculine and erotic in Southeast Asia. He works primarily through performances, often accompanied by and translated into drawings, mixed media collages and objects compiled as installations.

During his residency in Rimbun Dahan, he plans to expand a narrative that is triggered by a Malayan historical figure, Laksamana Cheng Ho. He seeks to learn the Admiral’s influence in today’s society, in particular in regards to his masculine identity and how it has potentially structured the perception of power, race and religion in modern politics. This will also be motivated by cultural findings during his stay in Malaysia, discussions and exchanges with locals as well as his constant interest in virtual RPG elements.

The resulting project is described and photographed below (performance photos by Nazir Azhari). Kelvin updated his progress in weekly blog-like entries on his website.

Tidal Bulge is the rise and fall of masculinity caused by the combined effects of gravitational forces exerted by one’s racial and economic status and the self conflicts.

Initiated by the interest towards Laksamana Cheng Ho’s treasure fleet, the project navigates around Malaysian Chinese masculine identities by figuring various struggles faced. Approached through RPG game theories, the visual aspects of the works are designed to be decided by the participants in forms of paper collages and their performed elements.

The participants are imagined as crews or sailors of a treasure fleet in voyage. Sea travels utilize lunar navigation as compass which also becomes the underlying historical prescriptions of the Chinese ethnicity throughout Malaya Peninsula. Apart from that, other game characters-based visual decisions are motivated by Malaysian cultural elements that suggest close proximity and relevance to astrology and the science of gravity.   Within social context, this participatory work is a plea towards racial and ethnic representation, their potential of indigeneity as well as its masculine connotation within Malaysia.