Dealing in Distance

A collaborative approach inviting Southeast Asian and Southeast Asian diaspora artists and their works to learn, unlearn, and relearn about the praxis of diasporic and migration in Germany, especially in the Southeast Asian context.
22–25 January 2026 throughout three venues in Bali: Cush Cush Gallery, Masa Masa, and MASH Denpasar.

Event Series

Opening Night

22.01.2026 | 6.30 PM
CushCush Gallery
Exhibition

CushCush Gallery
22–25 January 2025 | 10 AM–9 PM

Masa Masa
22–25 January 2025 | 9 AM–10 PM
Workshop

Open Level Dance Contemporary Fusion

23.01.2026 | 2 PM
Masa Masa
Workshop

Textile Landscape

23.01.2026 | 3 PM
CushCush Gallery
Performance

A High Mountain, A Sweet Dream

23.01.2026 | 7 PM
Masa Masa
Film Screening

Young Birds From Strange Mountains

23.01.2026 | 7.30 PM
MASH Denpasar
Denpasar Walking Tour

24.01.2026 | 10 AM
Monumen Perjuangan Puputan Badung
Interactive Salon

Girls gotta do what girls do?

24.01.2026 | 1 PM
Masa Masa
Talks

Tracing Identity Through Living Archives

24.01.2026 | 2 PM
CushCush Gallery
Workshop

Dose of Pleasure

24.01.2026 | 3 PM
Masa Masa
Poetry Performance

Thelma and the Vixen

24.01.2026 | 6.30 PM
Masa Masa
Dance Performance

90/Now

24.01.2026 | 8.30 PM
Masa Masa

Artists

is a queer Filipino performance artist based in Berlin. Their interdisciplinary, body-centered practice merges improvisation, contemporary dance, decolonial perspectives, drag, and queer dance floor histories as sites for resistance and transformation. Through movement, they explore migration, displacement, and diasporic struggles of loss, memory, and belonging, while imagining new possibilities for queer-centered worlds. They are a participant in the Goethe-Institut's Performance Ecologies Residency, and currently exhibited at Berlin's Schwules Museum.
Based in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, Amal Purnama considers herself a "generally creative person". She works in marketing at a tech company. Outside that, she collects pretty things, makes junk journals, photo stories, moving images- plus whatever she starts and leaves half-done.
[cap naga] is an explorative trail blazed by Barga—a Balinese composer and one-half of the duo KADAPAT—emerging the moment he strips away the gamelan instruments and the rigidity of his musical scores. Rooted in a foundation of formal music education and gamelan studies pursued from high school through university, Barga has ventured far beyond academic boundaries to immerse himself in a spectrum of "disruptive" yet playful sounds as his experimental material.
is a Berlin-based musician and performing artist, playing Javanese Gamelan and guitar. His work blends electronic and algorithmic music composition with traditional instruments. Drawing from diverse backgrounds, from engineering to performing arts, his projects span live performance, web sound installations, music theater, and more. His current artistic focus explores the tension between tradition and innovation, while seeking to revalue traditional values within contemporary life. His approach is syncretic, merging multiple cultural influences.
is an arts collective dedicated to exploring traditional art forms and reinterpreting them through a future-oriented perspective. Within Bumi Bajra, art encompasses a wide range of practices, including dance, music, vocal (kidung), wayang, costume, makeup, and theatre—presented as an integrated and holistic expression. Central to Bumi Bajra’s artistic practice is Asana Yoga (postural practice), which is regarded as a foundational discipline for understanding breath and achieving harmony with the universe.
is a regenerative tourism practitioner from Desa Les and a travel writer for tatkala.co. As a traveler, guide, and trader, he integrates personal experience into sustainable tourism practices that support local culture, nature, and the community’s economy.
is an experimental composer and musician from Jembrana, Bali. His artistic practice centers on the exploration of Jegog gamelan, focusing on timbre, sound perception, and the ambiguity of noise through digital, experimental, and cross-media approaches. As the founder of Jelana Creative Movement and a member of the duo KADAPAT, he actively fosters dialogue between local traditions and contemporary music practices on national and international stages.
is a Vietnamese multimedia composer, sound artist, and electronic improviser whose diverse practice revolves around exploring local artistic culture at the intersection of tradition and modernity. In 2019 and 2020, she was honored as Artist of the Year by Hanoi Grapevine, and in 2022, she received the prestigious Prince Claus Seed Awards (Netherlands). Her works have been shown in Vietnam, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, the Czech Republic, and Germany.
is an interdisciplinary artist working between Germany, UK and Vietnam. Her practice moves across photography, moving image, installation, and scientific research, exploring how violence and displacement leave traces on landscapes and humans. Her current research returns to Vietnam to investigate the ecological and psychological legacy of Agent Orange, examining how the land continues to hold histories of trauma and transformation, and how art can open new ways of sensing these entangled memories.
known affectionately as Oka, hails from Bali. His dance journey began in elementary school. He joined the Ratna Kumara Studio and the Warini Bali Dance Studio to explore Balinese dance traditions. Born in Denpasar on April 29, 2001, Oka completed his undergraduate studies at the Indonesian Institute of the Arts (ISI) Bali, majoring in Dance, in 2023. He then pursued a Master's degree at the Indonesian Institute of the Arts (ISI) Yogyakarta, graduating in 2025.
is a Scottish-Filipino artist based between Berlin and Scotland. Her work, rooted in experimental film and visual anthropology, explores how visual media intersects with collective memory, and the various socio-political realities. She engages with the materiality of the moving image, utilising analogue film, digital video, expanded cinema installation and performance. Playing with the processes of destruction, preservation and reconstruction, her work explores the parallels between these images/processes and the reality they portray.
is a writer, layout designer, and visual artist. Originally from Pinggan, he was born in Manikliyu, Kintamani, in 1995. He is currently active as an Archivist at the Mulawali Institute. His artistic practice is experimenting with the performative interplay between literature and digital art through an intermedia logic approach. He often collaborates with other artists as a visual designer for theater and dance performances and works as a Visual Jockey (VJ) in various music events.
is a Berlin-based Indonesian-Filipina fiction writer, crafter, and trained psychologist. With extensive experience in trauma-and-community-work in Indonesia, she was a research fellow at Harvard Kennedy School. She now designs workshops blending jewelry crafting, psychology, and writing. Working as a freelancer for Tempo Magazine Indonesia, Nelden also contributed to the editorial team of the online magazine Südostasien. In 2025, she was awarded the Literature-Stipend for Writers Writing in Non-German Languages by the City of Berlin.
known as Ayu Anantha, is a choreographer who is interested in empowering women and children through dance. In 2019, Ayu founded Kerta Art Performance in Ubud, Bali, which serves as a platform for both local and international students to learn Balinese dance while also creating new works through the Kerta Art Intercultural Performing Art program.
is an Indonesian light artist and designer based in Berlin (Germany). Her artistic practice delves into themes of human perception and ephemerality, using light as a universal yet profoundly personal medium to reevaluate how we engage with the world. She contrasts the intangible qualities of light with tangible materials to create ever-changing patterns, movements, and colours that challenge our visual perception. Her work ranges from light sculpture and light photography, to set design and light installation.

Website

Instagram
is a Lao dancer and co-founder of the Fanglao Dance Company. She began learning Lao Traditional Dance at six in Vientiane. In 2006, she discovered contemporary dance through a workshop with Lao-French choreographer Ole Khamchanla. Since 2008, she has toured France annually with Compagnie KHAM and participated in productions across Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos. In 2013, she founded Fanglao Dance Company to promote contemporary dance and foster international artistic collaboration.
is a Berlin-based artist and performer with a background in Exhibition Design and Scenography at the University of Art and Design (HfG) Karlsruhe as well as Performance Studies and Design Theory at the University of the Arts (UdK) Berlin. His works explore identity at the intersection of gender, race, and class, bridging visual and performing arts. His artworks have been exhibited in Museum der Bildenden Künste Leipzig, Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin, and the Vietnamese Women’s Museum Hanoi, offering a nuanced exploration of belonging, migration, and diasporic experiences.
is a nonbinary filmmaker and curator based in Berlin (Germany). They are co-founder of un.thai.tled collective, platform for Thai diasporic artists based in Germany. Their research about exiled Cambodian artists in East Germany was featured at D21 Leipzig, MDBK Leipzig, and at Kunst Raum Mitte Berlin. Their recent short film I don’t want to be just a memory (2022–24) had its premiere at 74th Berlinale Forum Expanded.
is a contemporary and experimental music composer known for his cross-cultural works that bridge Eastern and Western musical traditions. His diverse practice spans gamelan, Western string ensembles, electro-acoustic performance, film, art installation, and theatre, and his contributions have been recognized with numerous national and international awards.
is a group of six artists based along the east coast of so-called Australia and Berlin, who originally formed through shared diasporic connections to Indonesia. The collective represents a diverse range of practices, including the use of performance, installation, video, photography, painting and sculpture. Their projects together are formed through collective thinking and resourcing: nurturing modes of exchange that offer reprieve from individual practice. Current members are Bridie Gillman (QLD), Ida Lawrence (Germany), Leyla Stevens (NSW), Kartika Suharto (NSW), Kyati Suharto (NSW), Mashara Wachjudy (VIC).
is a fashion design lecturer who uses elements of fashion and photography to create her artworks. Her works are very much rooted to her identities as a Chinese Balinese and wedded to a Balinese Hindu family. At times her works are also related to global issues. Vita has exhibited at SIKA Gallery, Discovery Shoping Mall, Room8 Art Shop, Bentara Budaya Bali, and ISI Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia.
is a Malaysian visual artist and lecturer whose practice examines the entanglements of land, memory, and material trace. Through long-term research, his work investigates how extractive economies and postcolonial regimes imprint onto bodies, maps, and landscapes. Working across installation, fiber art, and cartographic interventions, he often employs natural materials—rattan and oil palm waste—to unearth the silent histories they carry. His recent projects explore how nature is framed through systems of value, and how ecological residues carry the ghosts of erased knowledge.

Curators

is a Lang Son (Vietnam) based video artist and independent art producer using multidisciplinary approaches to rethinking ‘dance’ in Vietnam. She creates safe spaces for performance practices outside existing systems,encouraging artists to explore new performance thinking and making. She has produced various projects supported by British Council, Goethe Institut, and co-curated Nổ Cái Bùm Festival 2024 (Vietnam); Djakarta International Theater Platform 2025 (Indonesia) and Dealing in Distance (2025-26). Red received the Prince Claus Seed Award in 2022.
Born a Balinese nomad, Savitri Sastrawan is an arts and language practitioner. She is currently a lecturer in the Indonesian Institute of the Arts (ISI) Bali. She studied Masters in Global Arts at Goldsmiths University of London, UK and Fine Art Painting at ISI Denpasar. Her research interest is to explore the interdisciplinary possibilities in the arts and language within the global society and culture. This includes recollection of narrations in history, geography and visual culture that existed within/about Bali and Indonesia. She is active in collectives Rupa Bali and Gurat Institute. Exhibitions she has curated include "Merayakan Murni" with Ketemu Project (2015-2016) and "Mengingat 25 Tahun Reformasi" with Cemeti Institute for Art and Society (2023).
Wayan Sumahardika (Denpasar, 1992) is a writer, director, and theater maker working at the intersection of archives, choreography, and curatorial practice to intervene in dominant structures of representation. Suma serves as the Artistic Director of the Mulawali Institute, a cross-disciplinary research and creation hub in Bali focused on performance production, art programming, and the development of alternative curricula grounded in local knowledge and community-based aesthetics. He is also the initiator of B-PART (Bali Performing Arts Meeting), a micro-laboratory festival that positions Bali as a pluriversal experience and a transitory space for performing arts ideas across regions. Through documentary and speculative approaches, Suma seeks to negotiate Bali as a framework for civic praxis and to understand customary rituals as social terrains open to critical possibilities.