Oase

Oase is a work that questions the photographic relationship with the imaginary, specifically in relation to the things that now bring me calm, protection, and transformation in my everyday life through the people I love and the environment around me.

I was born in Bali and spent a third of my life moving from one city to another across Indonesia, never truly settling. This constant movement shaped the way I see the world, but it also deepened my longing for an "oasis"—a space not only to pause and breathe, but to reflect, grow, and reconnect with myself.

Imagination plays a central role in shaping this work. It moves through the mind, allowing me to rediscover reality and project a space of protection, serenity, and fantasy. In this process, childhood memories begin to resurface, leaving open space for reflection and interpretation.

Today, I have chosen to live in Aceh. Once unfamiliar to me, it has slowly transformed into a landscape of stillness and emotional refuge. Through this project, I seek to explore the narrative potential of images and their multiple interpretations, while also questioning the relationship between photography and imagination in the context of the everyday and the familiar.

This series consists of photographs taken between 2023 and 2025, presented in diptychs, drawn from journals I have kept since my arrival in Aceh. I photographed my family and documented the surrounding environment that has shaped my sense of calm. From these ordinary and simple subjects, I search for anecdotes, visual poetry, traces, or situations that offer multiple layers of reading.

Oase is a personal project born from close observation of my living space, reflections on my internal journey, and an attempt to understand how geography, time, relationships, and emotional connection can evolve into a source of life—through photographs that invite open interpretation.