Join Indonesian artist Khairani Barokka for an online discussion and sharing workshop for Indonesian people. This event is part of our expanded programme ‘Languages of Intimacy’ and ongoing work with artists Khairani Barokka and Bella Milroy, following Grand Union’s recent exhibition.
Beginning at 10am in England (GMT) / 5pm in Jakarta, Indonesia (WIB), this workshop is designed to centre the Indonesian context of Okka’s work, coinciding with the time before fast-breaking during Ramadan.
In Indonesia, people traditionally hang out together and look for fast-breaking food before the call to evening prayer, socialising and joining in activities, so that when the time comes to break fast, friends and family are already gathered together. This is called Ngabuburit.
This workshop presents an opportunity for Indonesian people based in the UK and Indonesia to come together, reflect and share experiences of Ngabuburit. Okka will lead a variety of discussion points and imagining exercises within the workshop, to engage with artworks depicting Indonesian culture-specific contexts.
Within ‘Languages of Intimacy’, Okka’s work explores Indonesian indigeneities, health practices and sick intimacies. ‘Kerokan Pol’, a series of four moving image works shot in Jakarta, considers the crowded spaces and communal cacophony of Indonesian social intimacies and relationships, juxtaposed in a surreal, playful manner with scenes of Western modernity and hypercapitalism.
The workshop will be primarily delivered in English but there may be moments where Indonesian language is used in the discussion.
The four films are each 4 – 17 minutes in length. We would recommend watching a short section of each film before the workshop, if capacity allows. The films are captioned in Indonesian and English, with occasional asides and strategic opacities therein.
The workshop uses the 3D VR walkthrough of our ‘Languages of Intimacy’ exhibition, made in collaboration with V21 Artspace. This resource provides a long-term legacy for the exhibition beyond the gallery, allowing further reflection on and experience of Bella and Okka’s work and practices.
Tickets are free but booking through Eventbrite is essential. You will receive an email confirming your booking, and a reminder shortly before the workshop.
The workshop takes place online via Zoom and you will receive a joining link one day prior.
The workshop will have live captions provided by 121 Captions.
As a small organisation, we are working to embed more strands of accessibility into our programming including BSL interpretation. We will happily book BSL interpretation for this event if this will support your taking part. Please get in touch and we will arrange this.
About 'Kerokan Pol'Open accordion
Kerokan Pol is a playful way of saying ‘kerokan to the max’ in Indonesian. Kerokan is a traditional Indonesian form of healing from cold and flu symptoms in which a coin is used to rub cajuput oil in stripes into someone’s back – the redder the stripes, the more the treatment was needed. Along with the selling of Jamu and the picking of tumeric, Kerokan is one of the Indonesian practices shown in ‘Languages of Intimacy’.
The film works represent some of the socioecological intimacies that Khairani considers the kindest and warmest from their country of birth, and shares them with the place they have made a new home in. The sharing of these practices works as a rebuttal to the forced isolation and societal / medical neglect that disabled and ill people face.
About Khairani BarokkaOpen accordion
Khairani Barokka (b. 1985) is a writer, artist, arts consultant, translator and editor from Jakarta. Okka’s writing and art centres disability justice as anticolonial praxis. This often involves subverting expectations of formats such as captions—which in her work often takes the form of poetry, essays, and hybrid work—and practices such as translation. By focussing on affective flows of violence in colonial capitalism past and present, Okka consistently links environmental and indigenous justice to disability justice, and to historical colonial archives and visual cultures, in the work. In particular, Okka centres forms of disability justice that are rooted in Global South lived experiences, including her own.
Okka’s most recent exhibition was ACE-funded Kerokan Pol, part of the duo exhibition Languages of Intimacy (with Bella Milroy) at Birmingham School of Art’s Gallery in 2024, curated by Grand Union. It is a collection of four short films shot in Jakarta, on sick-disabled intimacies drawing from Indigeneities, against a backdrop of hypercapitalism. Her latest books are 2021’s Ultimatum Orangutan (Nine Arches, shortlisted for the Barbellion Prize), 2024’s amuk (Nine Arches, longlisted for the Jhalak Poetry Prize), and her 2025 speculative nonfiction debut, Annah, Infinite (Tilted Axis), an Expert Pick in the Bookseller.
