Boedi Widjaja's architectural installation at The National Gallery, Singapore

Boedi Widjaja’s conceptually charged practice engages deeply with his own lived experience of migration and diaspora, and reflects on the complexities of hybridity, travel and isolation. For the Singapore Biennale in 2019, Boedi installs a site-specific proto-structure that serves as a diptych to the first iteration of the work at the 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in 2018. - Patrick Flores, Singapore Biennale 2019 Artistic Director 

It's your last chance to catch the installation before the show closes on the 22nd of March 2020!

The structure of Black—Hut, Black—Hut references the gap between ground and land in tropical and subtropical vernacular houses that are built on raised floors, such as the Javanese joglo, the Queenslander house and the Malay house, as well as the HDB void deck. Key to the work is also its surface – rendered in concrete infused with salt, the salt will ‘bloom’ over time.

Boedi Widjaja's practice shifts effortlessly between photography and drawing. Complicating the process of image making, Widjaja asserts an additional layer of mediation, obscuring his own painstakingly made drawings with analogue photography processes, appropriating his own appropriated images to produce abstract, distorted images that differ widely in context. The work is often austere, portraying specters of historical figures; at other times, his subjects are abstract or corporeal manifestations of personal and cultural memories. - Shona Mei Findlay, Curator of Asia Programs, Kadist

Boedi Widjaja (b. 1975, Solo, Indonesia) received his Bachelor of Architecture from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia in 2000. He has exhibited widely, including at the 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (Brisbane, 2018), the Diaspora Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale (2017); Jerusalem Biennale (2017); ‘From East to the Barbican’ at Barbican (London, 2015) and ‘Bains Numériques #7’ at Enghien-les-Bains (France, 2012). The artist’s solo exhibitions include, ‘Black—Hut,’ a Singapore Biennale 2016 Affiliate Project at Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore (2016) and ‘Path. 6, Unpacking my Library’ at Esplanade (Singapore, 2014). He lives and works in Singapore.

All images courtesy of the Artist.

National Gallery Singapore

1 St Andrew’s Road
Singapore 178957
(65) 6690 9400

nationalgallery.sg

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Fri: 10am - 9pm