While trained as a sculptor at New Zealand's
Canterbury School of Fine Arts, Bamadhaj's expansive artistic practice also includes drawings, site-specific installations, digital media and print artworks, 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. == References ==