POLLINATION ‘TRAVELS’ TO YOGYAKARTA, INDONESIA

Driven by the need to create critically active and supportive artist-curator-community networks within South East Asia, our first-ever international initiative ‘Pollination’ was successfully launched at The Factory (December 2018) with the joint exhibition ‘We’re in this, together’ by Julia Sarisetiati and Vicky Đỗ, curated by Grace Samboh and Bill Nguyễn. This February ’Pollination’ travels to Yogyakarta (Indonesia) with two solo exhibitions by our participating artists and curators: ‘Choreographed Knowledges’ by Julia Sarisetiati; and ‘From Now On’ by Vicky Đỗ.

‘Choreographed Knowledges’ (19 Jan – 9 Feb at Cemeti Institute for Art and Society) by Julia Sarisetiati, curated by Grace Samboh, builds on the artist’s long-term research and engagement with Indonesian migrant workers. This project aims to explore how bodies of power, such as state and corporations, “choreograph” bodies across the globe as a migrant workforce. It looks in-depth at how future migrant workers are taught – through education and training – to embody knowledge relevant to the industries and countries they will travel to, while questioning what politics underlie the need to work abroad. http://www.cemeti.org

‘From now on’ (31 Jan — 28 Feb at Galeri Lorong) by Vicky Đỗ, curated by Bill Nguyễn, explores the past and present lives of different communities of Vietnamese migrants, and the significance this micro-history has on our collective memory. Utilizing various ways of story-telling and stylistic approaches to the moving image, her artworks examine the transmission of, as well as the exchange between, the different types of memory: from the officially-approved; those excluded from mainstream history; to personal archives and fictional narratives. In revisiting a past almost forgotten, this exhibition attempts to better understand our current time of increasing nationalism and militarism, where emotions of dislocation, amnesia and loss are still experienced by the hundreds of thousands of migrants around the globe. https://www.facebook.com/GaleriLorong/

This inaugural edition of ‘Pollination’ was co-developed and co-sponsored, with SAM Fund for Arts and Ecology (Indonesia).

Pollination current members:

Organizational Partners: The Factory Contemporary Arts Centre, ILHAM Gallery, SAM Art and Ecology Fund

Curatorial Advisors: Zoe Butt, Agung Hujatnikajennong, Rahel Joseph

Curator Participants: Bill Nguyễn, Grace Samboh

Artist Participants: Vicky Đỗ, Julia Sarisetiati