Boedi Widjaja
Residency period
1 September 2020 – 28 February 2021
About
Focus
Mapping memories by mobilising narratives, images, and sites has been a recurrent gesture for Boedi Widjaja in the last decade of his practice. Moving beyond cartographic representation, his approach to mapping embraces a multiplicity of angles—from phenomenological responses to archaeological dives into far-off times—through which he retraces our understanding of history and memory. During the residency, he will focus on Medang Kamulan (“Medang the origin” in Javanese), an ancestral site prominently embedded in Javanese collective memory. Believed to be located in Grobogan (Central Java), Medang Kamulan is a place of beginning, the mythical cradle of Javanese civilisation that appears in oral histories, epic literature, and countless legends. In harking back to this site of origin, the artist will speculate on how cultural kinships could be moulded by unhindered flows and unconstrained connections before the rise of colonialism and of the border politics of nation-states. This research is part of Path. (2012 – ongoing), a body of work revolving around migration, movement, and belonging that reframes our existence by recasting our relationship to the past.
Residencies brochure (October 2020 – February 2021)
Image credit: Boedi Widjaja, Re-seeing, 2014, single-channel video projection, installation view. Courtesy the artist.
Public programmes

23 Jan 2021, Sat 02:00 PM - 07:00 PM
Read More
Residencies OPEN offers a rare insight into the artist’s studio. Through discussions, performances, installations, and presentations of works-in-progress, Residencies OPEN showcases the diversity of contemporary art practice from around the globe and the divergent ways artists conceive an artwork with the studio as a constant space for experimentation and research.
Featuring Artists-in-Residence:
Kin Chui (Singapore), ila (Singapore), Sim Chi Yin (Singapore/United Kingdom), Marvin Tang (Singapore), Boedi Widjaja (Indonesia/Singapore), and Green Zeng (Singapore).
Also joining Residencies OPEN is Beatrice Glow (United States) thanks to a new partnership between the Centre and the Yale-NUS College Artist-in-Residence Programme. For more info, refer to https://artsandhumanities.yale-nus.edu.sg/artists-in-residence/about/.
Image: Studio of Fyerool Darma, Residencies OPEN, 17 and 18 January 2020.