Indentured archives and speculative futures in Singapore: A conversation with artist Priyageetha Dia

Abstract

Priyageetha Dia is a Singapore-based transdisciplinary artist whose work brings together South-East Asian plantation histories, postcolonial memory, migration politics, and extractivism as it relates to both labour and data. The conversation focuses on submerged and speculative archives of indentureship in Dia’s work. Dia describes how specific strategies, such as layering archival images, embodying diasporic Tamil ritual, as well as incorporating CGI and 3D animation in her moving image installations create a counter archive of the histories and afterlives of indentureship in present-day Malaysia and Singapore.