How can DNA become a medium for thinking about diaspora? Since 2019, artist Boedi Widjaja has worked with Dr Eric Yap, Clinician Scientist and Associate Professor in Human and Microbial Genetics at the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine and Principal Investigator at the Institute for Digital Molecular Analytics and Science (IDMxS), to explore this question. Their cross-disciplinary collaboration brings together art and molecular biology to expand on Boedi’s explorations of memory, genealogy and diaspora.
Boedi’s installation 东邪西毒 I Want to Infect You with History, currently on view in the exhibition On the cusp, considers how history survives through language, DNA, gesture and lived experience. Dr Yap and Dr Wee Soon Keong, Research Fellow at IDMxS, will share insights into the genetic sequencing and experimentation undertaken in the lab and how these informed Boedi’s investigations. Together, they will discuss how DNA is a language through which inherited histories could be encoded. The programme concludes with a guided tour of Boedi’s installation, inviting participants to encounter the work in situ.
This artist talk is presented by NTU Museum as a part of the ongoing exhibition On the cusp which takes place over three locations in the NTU campus from 21 Jan to 2 Apr 2026.