PROGRAMS
POLLINATION ed. 1
About
The inaugural edition of POLLINATION was initiated by The Factory Contemporary Arts Centre (Vietnam), co-developed and co-sponsored, with SAM Fund for Arts and Ecology (Indonesia). From Feb to Dec and June 2018, selected curators Grace Samboh and Bill Nguyễn learned each others’ contexts and passions, respectively selecting artists Julia Sarisetiati (Indonesia) and Vicky Đỗ (Vietnam) as their artist conspirators for the joint exhibition We’re in this, together.
We’re in this, together attempted to unravel how Sari and Vicky locate and immerse themselves into their surroundings – be it place, site, community, people, or policy. As both individual practitioners and members of grass-root artist collectives (Sari with the Jakarta-based ruangrupa and Vicky with the Saigon-born Chaosdowntown), the participating artists showed care and attention to their respective locales – within as well as outside of their immediate art communities. Rethinking how artists can be both subjects and objects, Sari and Vicky reflected on their practice as authors (as well as being authored by the environments in which they choose to traverse) by assessing particular situations and their conditions, with a mutual hope to question and transcend geographical and social limits, expectations and stereotypes.
In Feb 2019, POLLINATION traveled to Yogyakarta (Indonesia) with two solo exhibitions by our participating artists and curators: Choreographed Knowledges by Julia Sarisetiati; and From Now On by Vicky Đỗ.
Choreographed Knowledges (19 Jan – 9 Feb at Cemeti Institute for Art and Society) by Julia Sarisetiati, curated by Grace Samboh, builds on the artist’s long-term research and engagement with Indonesian migrant workers. This project aimed to explore how bodies of power, such as state and corporations, “choreograph” bodies across the globe as a migrant workforce. It looked in-depth at how future migrant workers are taught – through education and training – to embody knowledge relevant to the industries and countries they will travel to, while questioning what politics underlie the need to work abroad.
From now on (31 Jan — 28 Feb at Galeri Lorong) by Vicky Đỗ, curated by Bill Nguyễn, explored the past and present lives of different communities of Vietnamese migrants, and the significance this micro-history has on our collective memory. Utilizing various ways of story-telling and stylistic approaches to the moving image, the artworks examine the transmission of, as well as the exchange between, the different types of memory: from the officially-sanctioned; those excluded from mainstream history; to personal archives and fictional narratives. In revisiting a past almost forgotten, the exhibition attempted to better understand our current time of growing nationalism and militarism, where emotions of dislocation, amnesia and loss are still experienced by the hundreds of thousands of migrants around the globe.
You can learn more about the history, ethos, supporters, and program structure of POLLINATION here.
Meet the team of
POLLINATION edition 1
Curators
Bill Nguyễn (Saigon)
Bill Nguyen (b. 1988, Vietnam) is an artist-curator committed to researching and developing locally driven approaches to curatorial practice and artistic production. After receiving his BFA from Nottingham Trent University (UK), he returned to Vietnam and became an active contributor to the country’s contemporary art landscape. Through performance, writing, and curatorial projects, his work explores themes of intimacy, foreignness, cultural continuity, and historical memory.
Bill has collaborated with artist-run initiatives such as Nhà Sàn Collective and Hanoi Doclab, while also founding platforms for curatorial experimentation and audience engagement including Manzi Art Space and Curatorial Xà Quần. He previously served on the curatorial team at The Factory Contemporary Arts Centre.
In 2022, he became Director of Nguyễn Art Foundation. Bill is an alumnus of the 8th Berlin Biennial Young Curators Workshop and CuratorsLAB by Goethe-Institut Southeast Asia. His recent projects include In Absence, Presence (2025) and No More, Not Yet (2023).
Grace Samboh (Yogyakartan & Jakarta)
Grace Samboh (b. Jakarta) lives and works in Yogyakarta, Jakarta, or wherever her friends are. She makes exhibitions, produces artworks, manage programs, and writes. She believes curating is about understanding and making at the same time. Her research looks at contemporary practices outside existing centers. With Hyphen— (est. 2011), she encourages arts, artistic research projects, and publications in and from Indonesia. With Enin Supriyanto, Yustina Neni & Ratna Mufida, she ran Equator Symposium (Yogyakarta Biennale Foundation, 2010-2018). Since 2019, she directs programs in Jakarta’s RUBANAH Underground Hub.
Recent endeavors include “Jakarta Biennale 2021: ESOK”; “Collecting Entanglements and Embodied Histories” with Galeri Nasional Indonesia, MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum, Singapore Art Museum, Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, and Goethe-Institut (2021-2022); “Rewinding Internationalism: Scenes from the 1990s, today” organised by L’Internationale, and Van Abbemuseum (2022-2023), “Color Curtain and the Promise of Bandung” (2020-ongoing), and “Jejaring, Rimpang” in Pekan Kebudayaan Nasional (National Culture Week, 2023).
Artists
Vicky Đỗ (Saigon)
Vicky Do was born and grew up in Saigon, studied and worked abroad before returning to Saigon, where she has been working as an artist-curator for almost 10 years. Her artistic works explore the themes of conflicts and the displacement of (non)human species, the politics of urban planning on everyday life, and the multidimensionality of historical discourses. As a curator, she explores various modes of exhibition-making and knowledge-creation; she aims for a more critical, multidisciplinary curatorial practice.
Vicky has worked with several artist-curator collectives, such as Floating Projects (HK), Archive of the People (HK), Chaosdowntown (VN), Đường Chạy (VN), and Sàn Art (VN). She joined Nguyen Art Foundation in 2025.
Julia Sarisetiati (Jakarta)
Julia Sarisetiati, born in Jakarta, graduated from the Faculty of Art and Design at Trisakti University. She is an artist, curator, and organizer affiliated with ruangrupa, an artist collective based in Jakarta, and is a co-initiator of Gudskul: Collective Studies and Contemporary Art Ecosystem, an informal educational platform for contemporary art practitioners.
Her practice moves between artistic production, curatorial work, collective organizing, and long-term questions of sustainability. Since 2011, much of her work has focused on migration, labor, and education through Pulang Pergi, an ongoing project developed together with active and former Indonesian migrant workers. In 2013, Sarisetiati managed RURU Corps. This initiative received the Diageo-British Council Social Enterprise Challenge for Arts, Creative, and Tourism Organization award in 2015. In 2020, Pulang Pergi received an Honorary Mention from the Prix Ars Electronica. This engagement later expanded into Choreographed Knowledges. She has been a member of the lumbung.space working group since 2021, imagining a self-organized and non-extractive digital platform for inter-local art collective practice and experimenting with what an artist-run digital space could become.
Curatorial Advisors
Zoe Butt (Chiang Mai)
Zoe Butt is a curator, writer and educator focusing on critically thinking and historically conscious artistic communities, fostering dialogue among cultures of the globalizing souths. In 2022, she founded ‘in-tangible institute’, a curatorial platform nurturing locally responsive infrastructure for the arts across Southeast Asia. In 2025, she was appointed Artistic Director of ‘deCentral’, a forthcoming social enterprise for the arts, opening in Thailand in 2027. You can read more about her here.
Agung Hujatnikajennong (Bandung)
Agung Hujatnikajennong, is a member of the Curatorial Board of Galeri Nasional Indonesia and a lecturer at the Faculty of Art and Design, Institut Teknologi Bandung. His research focuses on curatorial practice, new media, and contemporary Indonesian art.
He has curated Fluid Zone (2009) for Jakarta Biennale ARENA, Exquisite Corpse (2012) at Shanghai Biennale, Not a Dead End (2013-2014) for Jogja Biennale Equator #2, 1001 Martian Homes (2017) for the Indonesian Pavilion at Venice Biennale, and Art Turns. World Turns. (2017-2018) at Museum MACAN.
He founded and directed INSTRUMENTA International Media Art Festival (2018–2019), curated triplet editions of ARTJOG | arts-in-common (2019-2022) and since 2022 has led Open Arms, promoting disability inclusion in Indonesian visual arts. His book Kurasi dan Kuasa was published by Marjin Kiri and Jakarta Art Council in 2015.
Sponsors and Institutional Partners
POLLINATION ed. 1 was initiated and organized by The Factory Contemporary Arts Centre with thanks to Agung Hujatnikajennong, Natasha Sidharta, and Rujak for their support in co-developing the inaugural ‘Pollination’; and Galeri Lorong and Cemeti Institute for Art and Society for hosting exhibitions in Yogyakarta.
POLLINATION ed. 1
We’re in this, together
Opened: 14 December, 2018
Venue: The Factory Contemporary Arts Centre, Ho Chi Minh City
Choreographed Knowledges
Opened: 19 Jan, 2018
Venue: Cemeti Institute for Art and Society, Yogyakarta
From now on
Opened: 31 Jan, 2018
Venue: Galeri Lorong, Yogyakarta
Curated by Bill Nguyễn and Grace Samboh. Featuring artists Vicky Đỗ and Julia Sarisetiati
With thanks to curatorial advisors Agung Hujatnikajennong and Zoe Butt
POLLINATION ed. 1 was initiated and co-organized by Zoe Butt, Artistic Director, The Factory Contemporary Arts Centre, and co-developed and co-sponsored by Sidharta Aboejono Martoredjo (SAM) Fund for Arts and Ecology. With thanks to host partners Galeri Lorong and Cemeti Institute for Art and Society.
POLLINATION is a recurring platform connecting emerging curators and artists in Southeast Asia with critical financial and educational support to investigate narratives that move across assumed borders. It offers the opportunity to co-produce and collaborate, and to mutually benefit from platforms in the region’s private arts infrastructure that recognize the value of sharing (pollinating) their critical ideas and activities.
