'How to Archive & Survive'

Keeping important documents in a suitcase was a common practice in the artist’s family when she was growing up. Unlike money or clothing, documents were not something she had ever considered essential for traveling. At the time, she assumed it was simply a family habit, perhaps one commonly practiced among Chinese Indonesian families.

Recently, while revisiting online accounts of the 1998 Tragedy, the artist came across stories of Chinese Indonesians gathering at airports in an attempt to flee the violence. They prepared only the essentials in a single small suitcase, ready to leave if circumstances became dangerous. If this was the reality her parents had witnessed or feared, why were documents the things they chose to keep in their suitcase?

For this work, the artist specifically asked her parents to bring out their old family documents once again. Carefully arranged alongside other records, the documents revealed an extensive archive, as though preserving them had become an essential and unquestioned family practice.

Reading these documents today, as someone born in the millennial era, the artist encounters unfamiliar phrases scattered throughout the records: “removed from the register of foreigners,” “temporary residency,” “application for a name change,” along with records of periodic tax payments and other administrative requirements. Examining these papers, she began to see how her parents had repeatedly sought to clarify and secure their family’s status in Indonesia. They complied with state regulations, followed administrative procedures, and paid taxes, continually navigating the systems that governed their right to live in the country.

The documents were renewed and changed across successive presidential administrations. Although the process may have been burdensome, each revision also carried the possibility of change and the hope of a more secure future. Today, the artist no longer encounters these unsettling terms in her family’s identity documents.

Following the violence of May 1998, the rights of Chinese Indonesians were gradually restored through significant legal and political changes, although this process was neither immediate nor complete. Looking back at these documents, the artist reflects on a history in which belonging to Indonesia was not always something her family could take for granted. Today, the word “Indonesia” in their identity documents no longer feels as unfamiliar, yet the archive remains as a reminder of the generations who had to repeatedly prove their place in the country they called home.