Q: Can you tell me about one of your favorite projects and why it’s special to you? A: One of my favourite projects is Trip Menuju Timur! It is something that I have built through the years overtime… it is a slow build project, it is a self initiated project. We collected funding from donations and some personal fundings for myself as well or something that can be give-and-take, as in I tried to raise the funding through selling my paintings and also probably doing workshops and stuff. I feel like this project can sustain itself, because it is from the community, for the community, and done with the community. It's more like “gotong-royong” in Indonesian terms, this sense of working together collectively. And it's special to me because I learned how my art practices can be a bridge in connecting me with my own community in East Nusa Tenggara. It is not only connecting me with the land as geographic but also is connecting with the people in it that I didn't know before. The communities, young people who were brave and courageous and started the initiatives with all the challenges that they face, and how many of them have this amazing love towards their culture, towards their community, towards their heritage and legacy. How I found the secrets that I never knew before, something even transformative and spiritual for me. It is very personal, it is very important to me and it has been leading me to this deeper research about my own culture and art practices in Lamaholot culture that can inspire the art practice in the contemporary world and bring solutions in mental health or well-being context as well.