Artist
Sebastian Koudijzer
Sebastian Koudijzer (b. 1993) studied at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, the Netherlands. Growing up as a child of different races – and surrounded by a large extended family on his Javanese side – he is interested in how identities are created. Using various techniques, he creates intimate stories that address themes of family, faith, identity, and their representations. Collaboration plays an important role in his projects; Koudijzer likes to give those he photographs space for their own voice. His work is an attempt to bring disappearing traditions, values and spirituality back into his own reality, with the camera becoming an exploratory tool.
The Strange Familiar
As a child I was always fascinated by the dagger on the wall at my grandparents’ place. There was something mysterious about it, something dark. If I looked at it long enough, the snake on the handle would stare back at me all evening. It was said that the dagger could be alive.
When I visited my grandparents a few years ago, we spoke about traditional Javanese culture. When talking about batik fabrics, my grandfather ran upstairs to change. He came down in a Javanese outfit and asked me to take a picture. “Wait!” Grandpa said suddenly. He returned upstairs and came back with the blade. I asked him, “What is that thing?” To which he responded, “the Keris”.
The Keris started to interest me more and more. A year later, I asked my grandfather if I could photograph the object again. To my surprise, he’d thrown it away. “Why?!” I wondered. He told me that the church leader had said that it wasn’t compatible with the Christian faith, not even as a decoration; that it could have dark powers.
I decided to find my own keris. During the search, I met a dukun, a traditional Javanese healer. From the very first moment, it felt like home. The objects and symbols I came across there gave me a feeling of nostalgia, stemming from my childhood. As a child, I spent half my time with my Javanese grandparents. They took me to all kinds of celebrations with family and friends. Javanese culture was once my reality, but it slowly disappeared. When I asked my mother why her generation isn’t interested in their roots, she replied: “Probably because that history is not so beautiful.”
My story focuses on a search for community and belonging; I want to rediscover an abandoned heritage in the hope of connecting with my sacred past. It’s a story for the next generation, without the tragedy and suffering. By performing rituals according to Kejawen, such as a spiritual cleansing, I find peace and acceptance in where I come from.
Kampong Tori
Every week, brothers Tyler and Sebastian enjoy Grandma's delicious Javanese-Surinamese dishes they grew up with.. In the summer, they spend much of their free time with their retired grandparents at a garden community in Rotterdam. In recent years, a new kampong has formed here, so to speak. As Grandpa describes it, it’s a neighbourhood in the Javanese style – with little huts and gardens, where everyone visits one another without appointment. There’s good food, a shared harvest, and seeds to plant.
To honour Grandma's cooking skills, the brothers join her in the kitchen. With loving curiosity, they ask about the origins of the dishes she makes. The nostalgic effect of smell and taste evokes many memories; piece by piece, each dish reveals a history that was hardly discussed before. In the Netherlands, the brothers find that it’s still relatively unknown that there is a Javanese community from Suriname – despite this group comprising 15% of Suriname’s population, a country with a long history with the Netherlands.
While cooking, the history becomes accessible. While eating, we are proud.
What attracts FOTODOK to the works of Sheng-Wen Lo and Tanja Engelberts is their absolute freedom of working with media: both employ not only photography, but also video, sound, words, and sculpture. In her latest work We exhale (2022-2023), Engelberts translates her images into sculptural planes made out of clay and finished with a glaze sourced from The Rhône river, while Lo , in her project Watch Out! (2022-2023) initiates a sort of jewellery treasure hunt game, based on the documentation of roadkills in the Camargue area. Both residents of The Rijksakademie, Amsterdam from 2019-2021, Lo and Engelberts have worked independently on subjects including ecology and non-human perspectives, while also often collaborating.
Yana Kononova started working on the project Radiations of War (2022) immediately after the Russian Federation began a full-scale military invasion of Ukraine on the 24th February 2022 – a new turn in a war that first broke out in 2014. Using a medium format camera, she captures pictures of war crimes, destroyed infrastructure, the activities of various Ukrainian services, the bodies of fallen warriors, and the victims among the civilian population. Once you have seen her images you can’t un-see them – monumental and powerful, they stay with the viewer.
Michelle Piergoelam and Sebastian Koudijzer both have roots in Surinam and investigate the traditions and rituals of their families and cultures. Piergoelam works with myths and tales and in her latest project Songs in a strange land (2022), she works with songs, and the colonial history they keep traces of. Koudijzer is interested in rituals and the search for community and belonging. In Kampong Tori (2021-ongoing), together with his brother, the artist spends time with their retired grandparents in the garden community of Beukhoeve, Rotterdam, cooking Javanese-Surinamese dishes together, and in time, the food becomes a starting point for conversation, evoking memories, and piecing familial narratives together.