KATHARINA SWOBODA
Artist
Katharina Swoboda lives and works as artist between Hamburg, Vienna and Graz. Her work is predominantly video-based but she also works in photography, installation art and performance art.
The Austrian artist’s work is predominantly video-based but she also works in photography, installation art and performance art, as well.
During a residency in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, in summer 2018 she explored the “Tiongha”. That is the Indonisian expression for Indonisians from Chinese descend.
At the Mahalla Festival she presents her new video work Tiongha- Chinese Indonesians.
Chinese ancestry has concrete effects on the current life situations for the people in the film. Chinese descendants in Yogyakarta cannot acquire ground property. The history of repression began with the Dutch colonial rule, which deliberately put the Chinese people into socially displeasing professions. After Chinese riots, they established "Chinatowns" on Java, where they now had to live. In project several such Chinatowns are visited.