Pieces and Paradox (2023)

Home is the locus of memory. Its physical structure becomes artifacts and space for memories. Home also serves as a metaphor of strategies on how memories are stored, survive, and be passed down. However, at the very space, memories are often left, shattered, and subsequently perish.

This work is a reflection on found photographs collection of Unhistoried, an archive-based project concerning on family photos and vernacular artifacts from Indonesian New Order era. Home and its construction is one of the crucial moments that always be documented. Building house gives a sense of pride regarding family progress, while at the same time, serves as the opening chapter for new memories.

The more memories made, the greater the burden to remember. The collapse of a home—whether literally and metaphorically—turns these artifacts into orphan images and memories. In this context, photography and home experience its paradox as a space and medium for storing and remembering.

Through the installation of bricks and found photos, this work presents traces of the extinction of home and family. Pieces and Paradox is a reminding gesture of our ambition for existence and memories, which is primarily about the preservation of events and objects.

Family to Nation

The spirit of development was a widely introduced and propagated persona during the New Order era, infiltrating civilians' domestic and private space. This was massively recorded in the Indonesian family archive since the family was the actor and the target of the development itself.

This vernacular practice of recording—photographs, documents, and others—holds layers of potentiality to enrich our historical narratives. The domestic space and medium is a possible verge which obscures control and propaganda within the domain of intimacy.

Family to Nation utilizes the domestic archive of Indonesian families as an effort of activating the peripheral narrative of our nation. This curatorial work simulates the possible space to access these personal documentations to re-present these ‘unimportant’ artifacts and provide opportunity for today’s generation to re-experience and re-think about the (historical) narrative made, collected, and gathered by ordinary civilians in their intimate space.

Jakarta International Photo Festival, 2022