Sekali pendatang, tetap pendatang (2023)

In this video, Lee retraces a journey to her hometown, Banda Aceh, Indonesia. Overlaid with text, the footage weaves together Indonesia’s complex history of colonisation, legislation, state violence, and discrimination against Chinese Indonesians. Lee visits sites of personal and collective memory; her family’s shophouse, the mass burial site of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami where her mother is believed to rest, and the graves of her father and ancestors. The phrase ‘Sekali pendatang, tetap pendatang’ (‘once an immigrant, always an immigrant’) reflects a marginalised history that remains largely unacknowledged and unspoken yet continues to shape the experience of Chinese Indonesians today.