Nadiah Bamadhaj

Nadiah Bamadhaj (born 1968) is an artist born in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia, and residing in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

She is a prolific artist with expansive artistic practices, a lecturer in fine art and also a writer who writes about human rights in Indonesia and Malaysia. She has created artworks focusing on both Malaysia and Indonesian histories and politics

Her works have engaged with various sociopolitical histories, more specifically focusing on Malaysia and Indonesia's nationalist social and forgotten histories,

She received her art education at Canterbury School of Fine Art, New Zealand . After finishing art school, Bamadhaj worked on HIV education amongst sex workers, before returning to fine art practice.

Bamadhaj has received numerous grants for her works, including the Nippon Foundations's Asian Public Intellectual Fellowship (2002–2004), the Indonesian Directorate General of Cultural (2022) as well as from the Arts Council of New Zealand (2022). While better recognised for her charcoal and collage drawings, some of her recent new works have also incorporated collage with gold leaf.

Bamadhaj's earlier works focused on, and interrogated some of Southeast Asian countries histories and politics, of which Malaysia and Indonesia have been her continued focus and interest. Her exhibition 1965: Membina Semula Monumennya (Rebuilding Its Monuments, 2001) at Galeri Petronas, Kuala Lumpur, looked to Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore in the context of 'Cold War' and 'communists' in how separate events in these countries in 1965 were nevertheless entangled, as each event impacted and influenced the others and how existing monuments commemorating some such events perpetuated old myths and continued to inflict damage.

Her later works, such as enamlima sekarang (2003) took up the historical event and subject of the Gerakan 30 September (G30S, or the 30 September movement) in Indonesia. Through the Malay word sekarang (now) in the artwork's title, Bamadhaj sought to address questions such as the mystery surrounding an 'aborted coup', the incomprehensible violence that nevertheless happened after the aborted coup, and how did the masses turn to massacre.

Her collaborative exhibition with Malaysian political activist Tian Chua, titled 147 Tahun Merdeka (2005), was a creation of an imagined future of Malaysia through digital manipulations of one of Malaysia's iconic public monuments dedicated to the May 1969 events in Malaysia, suggesting the need and possibilities for multiple reconciliatory strategies to address the multiplicity of traumas.

Bamadhaj's subsequent artworks focused on power dynamics of the body and land, gender, Malay identities which were often idealised, as well as important issues of social justice. while simultaneously bringing up aspects of the idealised docile female and suburban dream life of modern Malaysians respectively.

Her current artworks look to Indonesian society and its intricacies of life, expressed through the use of flora and fauna, figures, mythologies, architecture and batik motifs.