Boedi Widjaja (b. 1975, Indonesia; based in Singapore) explores migration through the conceptual frames of house, home and homeland, engaging with space and semiotics. Trained in architecture and design, Boedi works across media—from bio art and performance to experimental photography and architectural installations—often combining scientific phenomena with poetic gesture.

Boedi received the inaugural QAGOMA and Singapore Art Museum co-commission for his Black–Hut series, presented at the 9th Asia Pacific Triennial (2018-19) and the 6th Singapore Biennale (2019-20). He has exhibited at Yuz Museum, Shanghai (2024-25), National Art Gallery, Singapore (2023-24), FACT, Liverpool (2021-22), Katonah Museum, New York (2021) and ArtJog, Yogyakarta (2015). He had solo presentations at ArtSG PLATFORM, Singapore (2024), the Esplanade, Singapore (2022 and 2014), Helwaser Gallery, New York (2019), ShanghART Singapore (2018-19) and LaSalle’s ICA, Singapore (2016). He has participated in Art Field Nanhai (2024-25), Thailand Biennale (2023-24), the Diaspora Pavilion (Live Art), 57th Venice Biennale (2017) and Yinchuan Biennale (2016). Boedi was an artist-in-residence in the Institute for Digital Molecular Analytics and Science (2024) and NTU CCA Singapore (2021). He is represented by ShanghART Gallery.

Can you tell us about your background and how you started your artistic journey? 

I was born in Solo, Indonesia, and migrated without my parents to Singapore as a child—an early rupture shaped by socio-political forces that mirrored my grandfather’s uneasy youthful passage from China to Nanyang. These layers of displacement became the bedrock of my practice and a lifelong contemplation of house, home, and homeland. Trained in architecture, I worked as a graphic designer for over a decade until a crisis in my mid-thirties reframed everything: mortality became immediate, and the reckoning pushed me to dismantle my design office and fully embrace art. 

How do you stay inspired and motivated to create new work? 

It helps having a practice that constellates a number of discrete explorations. From the outset, I’ve found myself working simultaneously on various long-running series, each with its own specific agenda and inquiry. The series are discrete orbits, held in place by my interests in space, semiotics and diasporic identity; they unfold through material explorations of DNA and cosmic muons, and in the form of live art, film, architectural installation and experimental photography. A challenge is explaining to curators and collectors how these bodies of work cohere without being forced into a neat chronology. Collaboration is another fuel. I’m energised by working with poets, musicians, film-makers, scientists—fellow travellers who provoke new ways of sensing and thinking. These exchanges often introduce unexpected detours in my practice. They don’t just expand the work; they rewire the questions I ask of it.

How has your artistic style evolved over time? 

I see myself as being “born translated,” moving between languages, cultures, and states of being. Early on, my work was often described as autobiographical and oblique—rooted in personal history but expressed through quiet ambiguity. Many of my earlier works incorporated drawing and mark-making, from immersive installations to kinetic sound performances. Over time, the horizon has expanded. While my art is still grounded in personal lived experiences, it now strangely engages broader contexts and microscopic materialities: cultural transmission and cosmic muons, deep ancestral memory and DNA. Collaborations with scientists and researchers have led me to experiment with increasingly multimodal forms—installations that unfold over time, performances rooted in data, and spatial narratives that blur architecture and image. Rather than a stylistic shift, it’s a widening of the field through which I navigate questions of identity and belonging.

You often combine drawing, installation, performance, and digital media. How do you decide which medium best serves a particular idea? 

I don’t usually start with a medium-based idea. Many of my works aren’t trying to “communicate” in the usual sense—they emerge as manifestations or overflow states, charged with feeling, memory, or a persistent image. The medium reveals itself through process, site, and resonance. I enjoy responding to what’s at hand: the histories of a place, the poetics of spaces, the sensory entry points for an audience. Commissions become opportunities to dialogue with the specificities of a location—its histories, architectures, and cultural rhythms. Sometimes, the medium is shaped by collaborative structures. For instance, a co-commission by the Singapore Art Museum and QAGOMA allowed me to work with QAGOMA’s in-house building team, opening up the possibility of an architectural installation I couldn’t have made otherwise. In that sense, my medium is never fixed—it is something that unfolds, contingent and alive.

What challenges have you faced as an artist, and how have you overcome them? 

Like many artists in the gig economy, I navigate the rhythm between sustaining a creative practice and maintaining visibility. An ongoing challenge is balancing deep research and art-making with the time and energy needed to build meaningful connections within art communities that may open up opportunities. This is especially demanding in Singapore’s small ecosystem, where it requires cross-border effort. Multimodal presentations, collaborations with other creatives and artists, and making public art adds further complexity, involving coordination with various government agencies and numerous stakeholders. I’m grateful to my long-time producer, Audrey Koh, who manages these collaborations, allowing me to focus on my art. Over the years, I’ve learned to embrace my creative gait: to let ideas settle with time, to sidestep premature conclusions. I’m also learning to resist comparisons with other artists—choosing instead to rest upon the idiosyncratic rhythm of my own art path and the integrity of what the work asks of me.

How do you see your work evolving in the next few years—conceptually or materially?

I’m always interested in exploring how one’s personal history might find a place within broader and deeper histories. Space and language, the latter in its spoken, written, gestural, and encoded forms, will continue to be central in my practice. Materially, I’ll most likely continue my engagement with DNA and cosmic muons—invisible materials that speak powerfully of beginnings, inheritance, and transformation. These will unfold across diverse media. I imagine future works to not only occupy space but unfold through time—inviting attention, and a quiet resonance between the intimate and the infinite.

Text & photo courtesy of Boedi Widjaja

Website: https://www.boediwidjaja.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/boediwidjaja/?hl=en