KINSHIP

Kinship questions identity beyond bloodlines or geography. Born in the Netherlands and shaped by Javanese-Surinamese heritage, rooted in forced migration, I explore culture as lived and shared. Allowing multiple answers to exist without resolution.

Kinship is an ongoing multidisciplinary project that explores identity beyond bloodlines, geography or fixed definitions. Born and raised in the Netherlands, I navigate a layered inheritance shaped by Dutch, Indonesian, and Javanese-Surinamese histories that are rooted in migration, displacement, and cultural interweaving

My Indonesian ancestors were brought from Java to Suriname in the early 1900’s under a so-called contract labor agreement. What was once framed as work is now being more understood as a continuation of forced labor following the abolition of slavery in Suriname on July 1st, 1863. Within Suriname, Javanese, Indian, Chinese, Creole, and Maroon communities were brought together under Dutch colonial rule, forming today's complex cultural landscape shaped by survival and shared experiences.

Being raised within the Javanese-Surinamese cultural environment, my mother later migrated in her early teens to the Netherlands with her father, brothers and sister. My grandmother was there earlier to collect enough money to bring the children to the Netherlands. Where my mother understood that home is not as a place of origin, but as a place of becoming. Growing up Dutch within this diasporic context, I began questioning where culture ends and ethnicity begins, and whether such boundaries can ever be clearly drawn.

It is asking what it means to belong when identity is not inherited perfectly, but lived daily. Is culture defined by blood, by where you were born and raised or is it practiced? Can you belong to a culture you did not grow up geographically within, but were raised inside of? Rather than seeking definitive answers, this project creates space for multiplicity. Acknowledging that identity can be contradictory, fluid and unresolved. 

Through photography and other resources, going through archives, personal experiences I am approaching kinship as something practiced and shared. Family dynamics and struggles, cultural rituals, memory, care and community seeking. The work exsists factual rigidity, allowing many truths to exist in the space. In doing so I invite the viewers, especially the ones from the diasporic background or mixed cultural identities to reflect on how they define belonging for themselves. 

I’m not trying to attempt to claim a singular identity, but to listen, read about history, submerge myself into lived experiences and to the many ways kinship is formed beyond just bloodrelation.