A Bornean question in Bucharest

In October 2026, my digital collage Bor-Neo Identity? was part of the Bucharest miniCOLLAGE Biennale in Bucharest, Romania. The work is 420 x 594 mm, and it carries a question from Borneo to Europe.

What it means to be Bornean

Bor-Neo Identity? explores what it means to be Bornean when the lands that shaped our cultures and traditions are changing or disappearing.

As Indigenous and local communities move from ancestral lands into modern housing and cities, the work asks whether cultural identity can remain connected to the places we come from, or whether it must be rebuilt in new environments.

The artwork questions who gets to define identity: the communities themselves, the land and environment, or the governments, corporations and systems that have transformed them.

When forests become plantations, villages become housing estates, and traditional territories are taken over, what happens to the identities connected to those places?

Rather than providing an answer, Bor-Neo Identity? invites reflection on land, memory, culture, displacement and belonging.