SEGMENTS
When Lie Soei Pin, Joshua Irwandi's grandfather, passed away in 1996, he was only 5. When Tjan Ang Kie Nio, his grandmother, passed away in 2010, he was in Canada unable to attend her funeral. He wasn't a photographer then in either events. In 2012, after his father's video camera was stolen in Switzerland and lost some footage of Tjan Ang Kie Nio’s funeral, he decided to save whatever remains.
Irwandi requested his Tuako (aunt), who had been caretaker for his grandparents, to take out remaining images of Emak (grandmother) and Ngkong (grandfather). Ever since his grandparents moved from Padang to Jakarta in 1982, they have never opened their collection of photographs. However, the discovery wasn’t merely extremely rare photographs of ancestors, childhood, weddings, or studio portraits, but also artefacts such as school reports, Chinese-naming system, and several other items that the family thought they were lost.
Segments look into Irwandi's own family, exploring the extent of the diaspora from the Chinese mainland into Indonesia. The arrivals and the departures of the Chinese-Indonesians are in segments, ever since the Chinese ancestors stepped foot on Indonesia. The Chinese-Indonesians - the majority of which no longer speak Chinese - is a small part of a larger whole in which they often struggle with their own identity.
The project is still ongoing, as new artefacts and new photographs are often found and identified.