Biography

Arief Budiman is an artist-filmmaker based in Yogyakarta, working with sonic traces, distorted histories, fabricated realities, desktop cinema, collage film, and media installations.

His practice engages with speculative histories, public archives, and collective memory to uncover hidden and erased narratives. Using archives and technology as tools, he opens up alternative ways of reading the past, blending fiction and non-fiction to construct multi-layered narratives that function as alternative histories. His works often draw from personal memories, oral histories, and popular culture—such as novels, music, and film. More recently, he has developed methods involving non-human elements to trace histories of violence in Indonesia and across Asia.

His works have received several awards, including the Grand Prize for Short Competition at DMZ International Documentary Film Festival (2025), Best Short Documentary at the Indonesian Film Festival (2023), and the Julius Baer – Next Generation Art Prize in the Moving Image category (2021). He is a recipient of the SGIFF SEA-Shorts Grant (2025), and his short documentary received the Sharjah Art Foundation – Short Film Production Grant (2023). He is currently a member of two collectives in Yogyakarta, MES 56 and Piring Tirbing.

Selected screenings and exhibitions include International Film Festival Rotterdam, Images Festival (Toronto), DMZ Docs (Gyeonggi), Visions du Reel (Nyon), European Media Art Festival (Osnabruck), Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (Manila), Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Gwangju Media Art Platform, Transmediale (Berlin), Jogja-NETPAC Asian Film Festival, Sharjah Film Platform, Jogja Biennale XVI, ISCP (New York), Gerobak Cinema at Dhaka Art Summit, Arkipel (Jakarta), Kasseler Dokfest, Festival Video NodoCCS (Caracas), etc.

Selected residencies include Treasure Hill Artist Village (Taipei), G.MAP Project Lab Global Residency Program (Gwangju), Koganecho Area Management Center (Yokohama), Art Center Ongoing (Tokyo), MIRO Center (Gwangju), Pekan Kebudayaan Nasional (Kepulauan Seribu), and Jogja Biennale.

Contact

ariefbukdiman@gmail.com