Lisa Karnadi

The house of Lisa Karnadi’s childhood, nicknamed Jimin, was built by her grandfather in 1981 in Jakarta, Indonesia. After housing two generations of her family, it was gradually reconfigured into accommodation for workers arriving in Jakarta from rural villages in search of work.

Karnadi’s project originally began as an exploration of her acculturation in Switzerland in 2010 and the emotional challenges caused by cultural conflicts with her family, anxiety, and depression. She often returned to memories of her childhood home for comfort and realized that she had not yet fully processed its loss.

The course of the project shifted when Karnadi’s grandmother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Due to her deteriorating health and the house’s dilapidated condition, it was closed in July 2024. As her grandmother and father refused to give up the house, Karnadi’s work became an exploration of family history, memory, attachment, and farewell. Through a photogrammetry-based video tour, archival images and conversations with family members, the work attempts to document the spatial essence of the house before it vanishes. It explores how our homes store personal and collective memories and shape our identity.