Nessa
Theo

Awardee

Country

Indonesia

Nessa Theo reexamines history through artistic research.

Themes
Reexamining history
Racial justice
Disciplines
Artistic Research
Visual Art
Awards
SEED Award 2024

Profile

Nessa Theo is a visual artist and researcher based in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Noticing how academia, with its theories and arguments often articulated textually, is extremely exclusive, she explores different approaches and articulations through art. Her works processes and transforms theoretical jargons into the realms of feelings.

She also includes community-based projects in her practice to create spaces of exchange on memory and identity that aim for collective liberation. As a whole, her body of work challenges stereotypes, and therefore shows the cracks and inconsistencies of racial constructions either done to and done by the Chinese-Indonesians. In her practice, artworks and artistic research are positioned as tools of enquiry, dissemination, and pedagogy, which aims for transformations.